The European Union wants to standardize the management of natural gas storage facilities within Europe in order to increase security of supply. This emerges from the draft of the EU Commission for a corresponding regulation. The draft is available to the Handelsblatt.
According to this, the EU states will be obliged to report the storage levels regularly in the future. In addition, certain minimum filling levels are to be stipulated. For example, the target fill level for November 1 should be 90 percent.
States without gas storage facilities should share in the costs of gas storage. According to the Commission’s plans, operators of gas storage facilities must be certified in order to rule out that they pose a risk to security of supply.
If certification is denied, the operators have to meet conditions or sell their shares in the gas storage facilities. With this, the EU Commission is going beyond the plans of the Federal Government.
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The reason given in the EU Commission’s draft is that distortions on the gas market in the past six months have led to a sharp increase in gas prices. The storage level in the EU at the end of winter was far below the level of previous years. “This has increased uncertainty about security of supply and price volatility,” writes the Commission.
Securing gas storage facilities from misuse by other countries
The EU Commission received approval for its plans from the Berlin traffic light coalition, for example from Michael Kruse, the energy policy spokesman for the FDP parliamentary group in the Bundestag: He welcomes “the fact that the EU Commission has recognized the importance of gas storage for energy security and is acting here want,” Kruse told the Handelsblatt.
Gas storage facilities would have to be secured against misuse by third countries. “It must not be that countries like Russia secure access to our critical energy infrastructure and use it against us,” said Kruse.
He is committed to the rapid implementation of the filling level specifications for gas storage so that there is already enough gas available for the coming winter. “It is particularly important to me that we in Germany quickly tackle the certification of storage operators. In this way we prevent Russian operators, for example, from using the storage facilities against our interests,” said the FDP politician.
The Federal Ministry of Economics has already submitted the draft of a gas storage law, which partly takes into account the future requirements of the EU Commission. The law is to be passed by the Bundestag on Friday. The draft law also provides for minimum filling levels on certain dates of the year.
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However, the German law does not yet take into account the certification of storage owners planned by the EU Commission and the possibility of forcing the owners to sell shares. From a German point of view, it is sufficient to prescribe certain fill levels.
An expropriation of the operators would not be necessary if the aim of preventing the improper use of the storage tanks could be achieved with binding specifications for the filling levels, argues the federal government.
But the EU Commission goes one step further. The German draft law may therefore need to be improved. FDP politician Kruse welcomes the course taken by the Brussels authorities: “I think the proposal to withdraw Gazprom’s control over the gas storage facilities in Germany and thus improve security of supply is appropriate,” he says.
The point is particularly sensitive from a German point of view: In Germany, three natural gas storage facilities are wholly or partly owned by Russians, including the storage facility in Rehden. It is the largest natural gas storage facility in Western Europe. In the past few weeks, the accusation has repeatedly been made that the storage level is being kept artificially low. The memory belongs to the Gazprom subsidiary Astora.
In the industry, however, it is pointed out that the filling levels of the gas storage facilities in Germany were already at a low level at the beginning of winter – and not just the filling levels of the three natural gas storage facilities, which are wholly or partly in Russian hands.
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