15.01.2025
Despite the now complete stop of Ukrainian gas transits, no gas shortage is expected for the remaining winter of 2024/25. A complete refilling of the gas storage facilities in summer 2025 is still technically possible. However, incentives for refilling the gas storage facilities do not arise due to the significantly negative summer-winter spreads.
Berlin, January 15, 2025 – The Initiative Energien Speichern e.V. (INES) not only presents an updated and extended outlook on gas supply for the summer period of 2025 with the January update of its association's gas scenarios, but also examines the complete stop of Ukrainian gas transits.
Germany started the winter of 2024/25 with a gas storage level of 98 percent as of November 1, 2024. Since November 4, 2024, gas has been continuously withdrawn from the storage facilities, reducing the level to 80 percent by the turn of the year. The winter so far has been characterized by moderate temperatures.
Despite the now complete stop of gas transports through Ukraine, no gas shortage is expected for the remaining winter of 2024/25. The storage level requirement of 30 percent by February 1, 2025, will be met in all scenarios.
With moderate to warm temperatures, gas storage levels will moderately decrease to up to 48 percent. If extremely cold temperatures occur in the rest of winter 2025, the gas storage facilities will be extensively emptied by mid-March 2025. The level could then be at 24 percent by the end of winter.
A complete refilling of the gas storage facilities is still technically possible despite the complete stop of Ukrainian gas transits. Despite the moderate temperature level and the still high storage levels, the summer-winter spread remains significantly negative. There are no incentives for refilling the gas storage facilities, nor for booking storage.
INES Managing Director Sebastian Heinermann comments on the January update as follows: "A significant emptying of the gas storage facilities could require considerable action to refill them in accordance with the storage level requirements of the Gas Storage Act. INES recommends considering early and partial refilling through the tendering of filling instruments. This could mitigate potentially high costs without fully incurring the cost risk of unnecessary measures."
BACKGROUND ON THE INES GAS SCENARIOS:
INES continuously models the European gas markets to assess the security of gas supply. Based on this and considering the storage levels as of January 1, 2025, three scenarios for gas supply in Germany for the remainder of winter and summer 2025 were considered:
The INES scenarios for gas supply in summer 2025 are now being presented for the first time with the January update. INES publishes updates to the INES gas scenarios every two months. The next update is scheduled for March 13, 2025.
A detailed description of the scenarios and results is available in a comprehensive documentation. An additional slide set presents the key contents of the documentation clearly. Since the update in February 2024, no more press conferences have been held to explain the gas scenarios in detail. Previous press conferences on the gas scenarios were recorded and can be viewed on the INES YouTube channel. The publication of the updates remains unaffected. The updates have been published every two months since the November 2024 update, even in winter.
Current information on gas storage levels in Germany and in the individual federal states can be accessed at any time via the INES storage map. In addition, storage data can be filtered not only by different storage types (cavern and pore storage) but also by gas qualities (L-/H-gas and hydrogen).
FURTHER INFORMATION
Read Press Release in German / Pressemitteilung auf Deutsch lesen