Gazprom Head Starts Scaring Europe With Gas Shortages In Cold Weather

Last year, Medvedev, deputy head of Russia's Security Council, also said Europe would freeze over.

Gazprom Chairman of the Board Alexey Miller has warned of the risks of gas shortages in Europe in case of a cold winter. According to him, the rate of fuel injection into underground storage facilities lags behind the necessary ones, and some countries may not reach the target level of fullness by the beginning of the heating season.

"In Europe, it seems, they still do not realize the scale of the problem with gas injection into UGS," Miller said, as quoted by the company's press service. He emphasized that Germany and the Netherlands, which are among the top five countries with the largest storage capacities, will find it difficult to reach the 90% target. Now German storages are 71.1% full, Dutch ones - 64.8%, the head of Gazprom claims.

The most alarming situation, according to him, is in the Baltic States: Inčukalnske UGS in Latvia, the only one in the region, is only half full, and the injection rate is at a historical minimum. "That is, the preparation for winter is actually disrupted," Miller added. He also reminded that the season of gas withdrawal from storage in Europe often begins already in the first half of October, and there is less and less time to correct the situation.

According to Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) as of August 31, for five months of the summer campaign European countries managed to compensate only two-thirds of the gas volumes consumed last winter. The gap between withdrawn and injected resources reached 18.9 billion cubic meters, which is the second worst indicator in the history of observations.

Reuters specifies that in general, at the end of August 2025, storage facilities in Europe were only 76% full. For comparison: a year earlier this figure was 92%. At the same time, the agency estimates that Europe will still be able to reach the required level of reserves by October due to the growth of LNG imports, which should compensate for the temporary reduction in supplies from Norway due to planned maintenance of fields.

With this background, the EU is making attempts to completely abandon Russian gas. Until 2022, Russia accounted for about 45% of the bloc's gas imports, but by 2024 its share had fallen to 19% - mainly due to supplies via Turkish Stream and in the form of LNG. According to the European Commission's plan, by the end of 2025 the figure should fall to 13%.

At the same time, the European Parliament is discussing the acceleration of the full embargo on Russian gas: instead of January 2028, the transition may be moved to early 2027. And the day before, Denmark, which presides over the EU Council, proposed to close all possible loopholes for Russian gas to enter the European market after the ban is imposed.

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