Here is table from Sunday which also shows the total gas stored in each country, along with the capacity ("Working volume"), annual consumption, and injection / withdrawal capacities:
The UK has 35Mtpa LNG port capacity and spain has 44Mtpa which is more than the rest put together though (Germany has 0!), so it probably balances out in terms of screwedness.
The UK also produces about half of it natural gas.
Each country has differing reliance on natural gas too. The UK is particularly reliant, for example.
Only the Netherlands looks well prepared - 8.8Mtpa of LNG import capacity, 120TWh of storage and a relatively small population.
Somebody should make a model of country per country screwedness that takes all of this into account.
According to a recent Lord's debate the UK only has 5 days supply at peak demand, but are planning to re-open a mothballed storage facility to double this. As the UK gets 45% of its gas from its own domestic resources, the gas fields can be considered a huge gas storage facility.
All models and predictions will be based on assumptions, for example, there is a movement to not pay bills.
What if the people not paying decide that, since they are not paying, they might as well use as much as possible?
All it would take is a charismatic populist to come along and to promote such a thing for any reserves to be gone.
I am not sure that having LNG ports makes much difference if you have a minor currency such as Sterling and you have to just print more of it to pay for LNG. Other customers might have a manufacturing base or lots of gold, which would trump paper money.
Historically, the UK has not had much gas storage capacity (even Rough wasn't that big) because gas wells have a reasonable amount of turndown capacity and those wells are directly coupled through St Fergus and other sites into gas cleaning and then into the national gas grid.
Germany has never had significant gas production and is heavily gas dependent so has built up storage facilities for strategic reasons.
The mistake made was that since 2004, the UK has become a gas importer with a greater fraction of imports every year. There was then a series of judgements made by successive governments that:
1) Gas was only a bridge fuel from which the UK would move away over time
2) The UK network is also essentially directly coupled into the Norwegian gas system which is and was massive
3) The UK has proportionately a very large amount of LNG terminal capacity
Therefore it was decided that it was not necessary either to develop more storage capacity nor indeed to pay for the re-completion of Rough in order to keep it operating. This now seems to have been a serious error.
This is particularly true because:
1) The UK, like The Netherlands, is almost entirely gas heated, Germany is also heavily gas dependent but heating mixes vary across European countries by a lot more than most people appreciate. This is because the UK and The Netherlands discovered gas early and gas is a brilliant heating fuel (apart from the whole global warming thing...). Norway, which discovered gas in large quantities only after it had already built hydro infrastructure and invested in electric heating, doesn't use much gas for heating domestically.
2) The UK has a lot of renewables and very little hydro and has therefore developed over the last decade into a gas + renewables electrical grid and closed its coal power plants. The great wave of nuclear AGR shutdowns has barely started but the Magnoxes are mostly offline already. Other European countries have kept their coal plants around either in daily use or on standby and are therefore able to bring them back. The GB grid simply doesn't have much idled but non-demolished coal capacity left on it.
3) Although, unlike most EU power markets, the GB electricity market is not pure "energy only" and has a capacity market, like those markets, electricity is priced at the marginal cost which in most hours is set by gas generation.
So the UK gets a double whammy of gas price effects.
To make it even better it would be useful to have the stored amount per capita and also number of days the country can rely on stored amount. Although I understand the usage will heavily depend on the weather and how far the country will go in restricting the usage of gas reserves (for example, shutting down various production sectors).
Most EU countries do not have LNG terminals FYI it's not something that magically appears by itself. Germany has already slowed down approvals for other construction projects due to construction supply-chain issues.
Yeah, good point. So another point would also be listing ability to replenish the reserves (availability of LNG terminals and other negotiated supply solutions).
On the topic of AGSI, the company I work for published a Python client to work with their API in case you're interested: https://github.com/ROITI-Ltd/alsi-py
Edit: Correction, it's for ALSI, not AGSI, sorry about that. We should add AGSI now that the API is available.
That would be a very useless data, as gas consumption depends on the price. And the price is at a historic high, so we simply don't know what that means.
German Grid regulator BNetzA created forecasts based on historic consumption and assumed savings. But right now we have storage level way above even the most wildly optimistic scenario. This forcast is so hard i don't think it has any merit.
You can have a look at the AGSI+ [1], they list a Stock/Consuption ratio as 22%. But this number is IHMO meaningless, as it does not mean all is well for 22% of a year = 78 days, and than everything collapses.
Typical statistics that tells exactly nothing. If country A has 10 liters gas storage and it is 100% full and country B has 10 000 gas storage 50% full? Who is in a better shape? Hard to say, still - maybe country A uses 5 liters a year and country B 10 000 000 liters a year? Or vice versa. What if country A has long term LPG purchase deals to gasport (like Poland does) and does not have to pay spot price, etc.
Guys behind this clicks farm claim to "Telling data-driven stories about politics, climate, economics, and more.", but they tell no story, I would not trust them.
I think this would be a lot more useful if it showed the capacity. Our problem in the UK isn't keeping our reserves at capacity, it's that they're tiny.
Also what does Daily Trend mean here? I thought it'd be the percentage change since yesterday, but the UK having a negative daily trend and being at 100% now wouldn't work with that.
> I think this would be a lot more useful if it showed the capacity. Our problem in the UK isn't keeping our reserves at capacity, it's that they're tiny.
You are right. Check the "Stock/Consumption %" column here: https://agsi.gie.eu/ (choose the correct UK)
The UK (post-Brexit) currently has 1.2% of yearly capacity stored, and reserves are at 100%
I wonder what the UK gas reserves are for? Demand smoothing?
Thanks, that source has a lot more data! The Stock / Consumption field is especially interesting for comparison. The UK's largest gas storage plant closed in 2017 (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/20/uk-gas-stor...), AFAIK there's been no effort to replace it since then. Not sure why it's been kept so low though.
Ukraine is at 28.4%, that probably speaks how much reserve storage they have. After the war it will be important location for Azerbaijan gas transit (via Georgia and Black Sea). The pipeline will take some time to build, but it will make it more likely that they eventually join the EU and NATO as well.
Those numbers ARE ABSOLUTELY WORHTLESS. "capacity filled in percent" is a WORTHLESS METRIC that tells the lay reader NOTHING at all.
Austria might have a max capacity of 60% of their yearly demand, Germany might have 200% (made up numbers for illustration). In that case with full capacity, Austria could survive 4 months, while Germany could go two years. Yes, this disregards cross-country sharing, but even averaged across different countries, percentage means nothing. It doesn't tell us anything. The one and only question is: "How long can we go without new gas?" and percentage values don't answer it.
Capacity should be displayed either in average-demand days or a timeframe (= How many days could we satisfy demand with our stored gas alone?).
The answer to your question "How long can we go without new gas?" would be a meaningless metric if not accompanied with a large amount of qualification.
What is meant by "without new gas"? Without LNG shipments? Without local/European produced NG? Or just without Russian NG imports? Without any imports?
What does it mean "to go"? To consume at some historical rate? Consumption varies with NG prices - recently consumption has been curtailed as a result of high NG prices. At a macro scale, NG consumption has been falling. Europe-wide annual consumption is about 20% less than it was 10 years ago.
And an unqualified time answer - say one month, for example - would be meaningless as the rate of gas consumption is highly seasonal at various scales (daily, weekly, annually). A winter month is not equal to a summer month for example.
I guess that could all be calculated and presented and give us an idea. The looming threat is Russia not giving us any of their gas now, other sources are "safe", so I guess that's the baseline: How long can we go without Russian gas?
> And an unqualified time answer - say one month, for example - would be meaningless as the rate of gas consumption is highly seasonal at various scales (daily, weekly, annually). A winter month is not equal to a summer month for example.
That's why I discerned between "average consumption days" and "timeframe from now on / day x on".
Russia has shut down pretty much all of their supplies, and here we are, filling the storage for the winter. Storage levels are average.
That's probably about as close as you can get to having an idea. You might also have a look at the graphs at bruegel, but that wont help all that much.
What's rarely mentioned is that many European countries have massive reserves of recoverable shale gas but have banned fracking and are thus depending on imported gas...
That's one of the reasons the US are cashing in right now while Europe is having an "energy crisis".
Currently in EU renewable energy is practically 40%.
So there is zero point in digging holes in the ground. They can easily buy the rest and quickly grow renewable energy share (basically what they are doing now).
Europe is heavily dependent on gas, as the current situation painfully shows. It seems very premature to claim that there is "zero point digging holes in the ground" and odd to claim that they can "easily buy the rest" when energy costs are currently at crisis level.
The point is that 'digging holes in the ground' isn't inherently more secure than making sure that you can import fuel from other countries.
Both involve a certain amount of risk and uncertainty. Both require preparation and planning, and some degree of subordination of other national interests.
This is perhaps one of the lessons of the Ukraine conflict - Russia is still exporting gas to Germany and Germany is still importing it, despite diplomatic relations between the two countries being at a nadir. It's simply not in either country's interest not to carry on with the commercial relationship.
It would be interesting to know the end game here.
If the Ukrainian war ends, I assume that isn't the end of it. I assume the taps from Russia will turn back on, but it has shown itself to be an unreliable supply.
There is an emergency plan being executed and expedited to reduce total gas demand by 30%, which just happens to be the amount Europe imports.
With half of that 15% this winter.
Not all reduction of consumption decreases output. For example, leaks could be plugged, insulation can be improved, more efficient machines could be used.
Also, not all output is equal, not does all output have to be done at a fixed time. Heating homes has to be done during winter, but some factories can postpone production a few months to wait for more favourable circumstances.
Furthermore, it's only a reduction in a few energy sources that are required, with gas being the most important. Other sources could be used to compensate to an extent. We're seeing some gas power plants moving back to coal for example. Not great for carbon emissions, but it has more and more flexible sources.
If you look at the current plans in most countries, they're largely about reducing waste and excessive usage. I mean... you could consider not being allowed to heat your private swimming pool "impoverishment", but probably only if you were comically wealthy and entitled.
(I'm actually a little surprised just _how_ un-aggressive the plans generally are.)
This is going to be an "at your own risk" thing. If a country wants to build its economy around energy supplies from a regime that has shown it can and will use the energy tap as leverage and as a weapon, don't run crying back to mommy. I think everyone understands that.
Hopefully the end game will be to see this as an opportunity to do something against climate change and lower the gas consumption permanently. I doubt that will happen though.
Me too. A flagging economy would make capital investments in green energy even more difficult. If China decides to sanction us we will also lose access to most of the underpriced green energy. A flagging economy, no gas and skyrocketing solar panel/wind turbine prices will mean a lot more coal.
Europe didnt make enough hay while the sun was shining.
I think Russian bet is that Europe would take 3-7 years to shift dependence away from Russian gas and that in the mean time a lack of access to cheap energy will lead to economic collapse, which will ultimately make the shift even harder. Putin is not testing our resolve but our ability.
I suspect the goal is also also to trigger conflicts between EU member nations over energy scarcity. E.g. Germany has enough gas to last Germany for the winter so it prioritizes Germany and throws Lithuania under the bus so Lithuania lashes out, etc. A short term scarcity will lead to long term fractures - maybe even EU exits.
Meanwhile, this opens the door for politicians who will make peace with Russia and bring the gas taps back online and revive a sputtering economy - a role that Orban seems to be trying to fill pre-emptively.
I don't know when countries typically shift from economic conflict to kinetic conflict, but I hope that Russian intelligence isn't dumb/arrogant enough to assume that transition has zero probability.
Why? The current trend is to work hard in order to reduce any form of business with Russia that would help them to rebuild the army and become a threat again.
I assume that turning the taps back on would be seen as a short-term thing in order to fill storages and avoid short-term economic/humanitarian domestic issues. There's surely no country left left in the EU that considers Russia to be a tolerable long-term trading partner, except maybe for Hungary.
>but it has shown itself to be an unreliable supply
Russia is using gas to try and keep Europe out of the conflict. Once the war ends that ceases to be a motivator. Thus I assume they will turn the taps back on. That doesn't mean we want to rely on it which is the whole point of the question. Victory in Ukraine doesn't end this, so what's the end game. Is there going to be a further push for renewables? Gas from other sources? What's the time frames?
> Russia is using gas to try and keep Europe out of the conflict.
But it's not working, is it? Practically the whole Europe is helping Ukraine, sending weapons and everything we can to help.
It's not the question of how much gas Russia offers, it's the question of how much Europe is willing to take from them. Russia's status is very close to North Korea now - it's just unethical to make business with a state that got mentally stuck in XIX century and still thinks killing innocent people to grab more land is a good strategy.
I assume countries in the EU will no longer eschew longer gas contracts in favor of the spot market. The contracts have always been available and you might not have much faith in Russia any more but Europes second largest gas provider, Norway is still here. It's only a matter of making the choice.
Up to Russian invasion this February: old oil furnaces were being avidly replaced with natural gas ones. Solar installations were starting to slack off. Lots of re-roofing and new exterior wall insulation.
Since then: no slacking in the roofing and exterior wall insulation, but now everyone has a keen interest in heat pumps, and solar panels are being installed everywhere.
Gonna be hard to convince people to take their chances again with a fuel from such an unreliable source in the next few years, I think, especially if this is a bad winter and rationing happens.
I'm currently renovating a house. My government are offering subsidies if you disconnect your gas supply and go all-electric. We'll be doing that alongside full solar (possibly with battery) and heat-pumps for heating/cooling.
Be careful though: there are regions in the EU where electricity prices went crazy up. I know people who had a fixed plan at 120 EUR / month from an electricity company that went belly up who needed to take a new plan. My brother went from 120 EUR / month to 400 EUR / month for his electricity bill. Sister-in-law got 6 K EUR year-on-year adjustment for her electricity bill (so 500 EUR more per month on average). And a friend, for a big house granted, went from 120 EUR / month to 800 EUR / month.
Few people want to plan ahead (and spend the money that goes along with being prepared)... until they are in trouble.
I won't say that good things have come from this war, but it certainly is a wake-up call for countries to get their future plans in better order.
There is simply no excuse for the most industrially advanced country in the world (Germany) to have slacked off so much when it comes to energy. It must be some political angle, because not too many years ago Germany was one of the leaders in expanding their renewable energy sources.
> Since then: no slacking in the roofing and exterior wall insulation, but now everyone has a keen interest in heat pumps, and solar panels are being installed everywhere.
France here... Seeing how things were turning in May I turned my open fireplace into a closed one (way better efficiency) and ordered metric shit-tons of dry wood (I've now got enough for at least two years). Thankfully my house ain't using natural gas at all so at least I'm dodging that one problem. Now electricity may be rationed this winter: dunno, we'll see. But at least I won't be dying of cold.
Heating oneself burning wood has this advantage that it's stone-agey enough: chop a tree into smaller pieces, let them dry for a year, you can heat now heat your house during winter.
And nobody can "ration" me / prevent me from putting wood in the fireplace: that's the "stone age" part of it. The main french electricity company, on the other hand, is ran by state apparatchiks and if they decided to ration electricity (because, by "chance", half of the nuclear reactors are all simultaneously down), I'm pretty much sorry out of luck.
Overall I'm pretty disappointed by the EU (I'm an EU citizen) and plan to GTFO. I tried last year but it failed (residency was hard to obtain where I tried to go) but I'll very probably try again.
EDF is certainly run by state apparatchiks, but it's hard to argue that they haven't done a pretty good job making electricity available cheaply and plentifully to French consumers.
EDF is mostly doing a good job especially considering how the EU competition regulation hinders them but they seriously screwed up with the nuclear power stations maintenance situation.
> because, by "chance", half of the nuclear reactors are all simultaneously down
What do you mean with the quotes? It's not by chance, it's due to backlogged maintenance (due to Covid) and some corrosion issues in a few reactors. The plan is to have all maintenance over before the winter.
Really hoping to see power2gas facilities scale up. Gas storage seems like the most credible solution for stable, season-scale, grid-scale energy storage. Of course there are large conversion inefficiencies in a chain like wind->electricity->electrolysis->hydrogen->CCGT, but that’s where massive overbuilding of renewable generation capacity comes in.
The UK is aiming to have 50GW of wind capacity by 2030. It needs at least 300GW to decarbonize and ensure energy security.
Gee, it looks like that if we don't sell anything (but with this gov you never know) we (as in Netherlands) might be dodging the proverbial bullet this winter.
But I am personally counting on the fact that this gov will fuck up as usual ... always plan for the worst, then it can only be better...
This is strange, everything I heard is that Germany is in trouble with the gas situation but here it seems they have the most stored gas? Is this correct in content and meaning?
Lots of European countries are having trouble with gas, Germany was (IMHO) singled out due to being content about their situation of being reliant on russia (see NS2) before the invasion.
Other variables come into play as well. A mild and windy (lots of wind power) would help keep energy cost lower. From what I have seen, currently energy cost are expected to triple however worst case scenario could be 10-15 times increase. The effects on society and economic would be enormous.
They also have the largest population, produce no gas, have no LNG import capacity and have a bunch of industries built around cheap natural gas. Storage isnt the whole picture.
Germany secret: They went into panic buy mode and started severely overpaying for gas in order to secure all of the supply they might need. This not only made gas more expensive for everyone else, but also influenced electricity prices.
At least in Germany, not everyone uses gas heating - lots of domestic and institutional oil furnaces and tanks still around, like the recently-filled one in our basement that holds two bad winters’ worth of luxurious (21-22 C) warmth, or four normal winters’ worth of careful (18-19 C) usage. If needed, we can clamp down even further, closing off some rooms.
My husband’s parents switched to gas two years ago when their old oil furnace finally became irreparable, so my husband set them up with a diesel heater in their bedroom with enough fuel for two or three days, and the intention of bringing them down here in the worst case.
I’m sure that families and friends all over Germany and the rest of the EU have similar plans.
Aside from maybe the coldest two weeks, the climate is not even uncomfortable if you are inside (no wind or precipitation), wear thick clothing, and move a little. If you do physical labor, you're going to be sweating.
Nobody is going to die from cold in western Europe's semi-oceanic climate, even without any gas at all. For the vulnerable, there's plenty of alternative fuels. But we do have gas and lots of it, so this seems entirely baseless.
Economic disruption and having to keep our homes and offices a few degrees cooler than we’re used to will make this a “hard winter” for the two or three generations of western Europeans largely used to staying as warm as they like and general prosperity.
But not “hard winter” in terms of people freezing to death. Even if all gas were cut off (and it isn’t, Norway is still exporting) too many of us still have oil heating and/or wood-burning stoves, and are not completely anti-social.
Plus, as another commenter said, it’s not that cold in a lot of Europe all winter long.
And the places that are? Why, they’re the ones most motivated not to let Putin have his way with their countries and were the angriest with Germany over Nordstream - the Baltics and Poland.
To put this in relation, here is a comparison of gas storage capacities in Europe:
https://erdgasspeicher.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ines_ga...
Here is table from Sunday which also shows the total gas stored in each country, along with the capacity ("Working volume"), annual consumption, and injection / withdrawal capacities:
https://agsi.gie.eu/
Missing from the list is Switzerland, which does not have any gas storage capacities at all.
You can see it graphically (with more data) at https://gasdashboard.entsog.eu/ (scroll down a bit)
There's also Bert's Gazmon for quick overview
https://berthub.eu/gazmon/
The UK has 35Mtpa LNG port capacity and spain has 44Mtpa which is more than the rest put together though (Germany has 0!), so it probably balances out in terms of screwedness.
The UK also produces about half of it natural gas.
Each country has differing reliance on natural gas too. The UK is particularly reliant, for example.
Only the Netherlands looks well prepared - 8.8Mtpa of LNG import capacity, 120TWh of storage and a relatively small population.
Somebody should make a model of country per country screwedness that takes all of this into account.
According to a recent Lord's debate the UK only has 5 days supply at peak demand, but are planning to re-open a mothballed storage facility to double this. As the UK gets 45% of its gas from its own domestic resources, the gas fields can be considered a huge gas storage facility.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2022-09-07/debates/9AFA9...
All models and predictions will be based on assumptions, for example, there is a movement to not pay bills.
What if the people not paying decide that, since they are not paying, they might as well use as much as possible?
All it would take is a charismatic populist to come along and to promote such a thing for any reserves to be gone.
I am not sure that having LNG ports makes much difference if you have a minor currency such as Sterling and you have to just print more of it to pay for LNG. Other customers might have a manufacturing base or lots of gold, which would trump paper money.
Sterling is an anomalously strong and major currency given the UK's size and wealth.
...said my Dad in 2008.
Historically, the UK has not had much gas storage capacity (even Rough wasn't that big) because gas wells have a reasonable amount of turndown capacity and those wells are directly coupled through St Fergus and other sites into gas cleaning and then into the national gas grid.
Germany has never had significant gas production and is heavily gas dependent so has built up storage facilities for strategic reasons.
The mistake made was that since 2004, the UK has become a gas importer with a greater fraction of imports every year. There was then a series of judgements made by successive governments that:
1) Gas was only a bridge fuel from which the UK would move away over time
2) The UK network is also essentially directly coupled into the Norwegian gas system which is and was massive
3) The UK has proportionately a very large amount of LNG terminal capacity
Therefore it was decided that it was not necessary either to develop more storage capacity nor indeed to pay for the re-completion of Rough in order to keep it operating. This now seems to have been a serious error.
This is particularly true because:
1) The UK, like The Netherlands, is almost entirely gas heated, Germany is also heavily gas dependent but heating mixes vary across European countries by a lot more than most people appreciate. This is because the UK and The Netherlands discovered gas early and gas is a brilliant heating fuel (apart from the whole global warming thing...). Norway, which discovered gas in large quantities only after it had already built hydro infrastructure and invested in electric heating, doesn't use much gas for heating domestically.
2) The UK has a lot of renewables and very little hydro and has therefore developed over the last decade into a gas + renewables electrical grid and closed its coal power plants. The great wave of nuclear AGR shutdowns has barely started but the Magnoxes are mostly offline already. Other European countries have kept their coal plants around either in daily use or on standby and are therefore able to bring them back. The GB grid simply doesn't have much idled but non-demolished coal capacity left on it.
3) Although, unlike most EU power markets, the GB electricity market is not pure "energy only" and has a capacity market, like those markets, electricity is priced at the marginal cost which in most hours is set by gas generation.
So the UK gets a double whammy of gas price effects.
To make it even better it would be useful to have the stored amount per capita and also number of days the country can rely on stored amount. Although I understand the usage will heavily depend on the weather and how far the country will go in restricting the usage of gas reserves (for example, shutting down various production sectors).
Additionally the level of dependence on Russian gas differs between countries as well.
Most EU countries do not have LNG terminals FYI it's not something that magically appears by itself. Germany has already slowed down approvals for other construction projects due to construction supply-chain issues.
Yeah, good point. So another point would also be listing ability to replenish the reserves (availability of LNG terminals and other negotiated supply solutions).
On the topic of AGSI, the company I work for published a Python client to work with their API in case you're interested: https://github.com/ROITI-Ltd/alsi-py
Edit: Correction, it's for ALSI, not AGSI, sorry about that. We should add AGSI now that the API is available.
You can also see some of the numbers here https://memgraph.com/blog/gas-pipelines-in-europe or even try to run different scenarios https://playground.memgraph.com/sandbox/europe-gas-pipelines...
It would be much more interesting to see how many days of gas runway each country has based on historical usage.
That would be a very useless data, as gas consumption depends on the price. And the price is at a historic high, so we simply don't know what that means.
German Grid regulator BNetzA created forecasts based on historic consumption and assumed savings. But right now we have storage level way above even the most wildly optimistic scenario. This forcast is so hard i don't think it has any merit.
You can have a look at the AGSI+ [1], they list a Stock/Consuption ratio as 22%. But this number is IHMO meaningless, as it does not mean all is well for 22% of a year = 78 days, and than everything collapses.
[1] https://agsi.gie.eu/
Typical statistics that tells exactly nothing. If country A has 10 liters gas storage and it is 100% full and country B has 10 000 gas storage 50% full? Who is in a better shape? Hard to say, still - maybe country A uses 5 liters a year and country B 10 000 000 liters a year? Or vice versa. What if country A has long term LPG purchase deals to gasport (like Poland does) and does not have to pay spot price, etc.
Guys behind this clicks farm claim to "Telling data-driven stories about politics, climate, economics, and more.", but they tell no story, I would not trust them.
I think this would be a lot more useful if it showed the capacity. Our problem in the UK isn't keeping our reserves at capacity, it's that they're tiny.
Also what does Daily Trend mean here? I thought it'd be the percentage change since yesterday, but the UK having a negative daily trend and being at 100% now wouldn't work with that.
> I think this would be a lot more useful if it showed the capacity. Our problem in the UK isn't keeping our reserves at capacity, it's that they're tiny.
You are right. Check the "Stock/Consumption %" column here: https://agsi.gie.eu/ (choose the correct UK)
The UK (post-Brexit) currently has 1.2% of yearly capacity stored, and reserves are at 100%
I wonder what the UK gas reserves are for? Demand smoothing?
Thanks, that source has a lot more data! The Stock / Consumption field is especially interesting for comparison. The UK's largest gas storage plant closed in 2017 (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/20/uk-gas-stor...), AFAIK there's been no effort to replace it since then. Not sure why it's been kept so low though.
When I wrote the code that published that for Storengy UK around 4 years ago I never expected AGSI would get featured on HN. Strange world we live in.
Ukraine is at 28.4%, that probably speaks how much reserve storage they have. After the war it will be important location for Azerbaijan gas transit (via Georgia and Black Sea). The pipeline will take some time to build, but it will make it more likely that they eventually join the EU and NATO as well.
So from one dictator to another
In Snow Crash, there was a giant CIA earth that held all the data for everything and you could zoom in and out.
While the UX is probably "executive demo" rather than "daily power user", this and other data is perfect for such an approach.
It tells a meaningful OSInT story.
Basically, as a data user, where are my flying cars?
Those numbers ARE ABSOLUTELY WORHTLESS. "capacity filled in percent" is a WORTHLESS METRIC that tells the lay reader NOTHING at all.
Austria might have a max capacity of 60% of their yearly demand, Germany might have 200% (made up numbers for illustration). In that case with full capacity, Austria could survive 4 months, while Germany could go two years. Yes, this disregards cross-country sharing, but even averaged across different countries, percentage means nothing. It doesn't tell us anything. The one and only question is: "How long can we go without new gas?" and percentage values don't answer it.
Capacity should be displayed either in average-demand days or a timeframe (= How many days could we satisfy demand with our stored gas alone?).
The answer to your question "How long can we go without new gas?" would be a meaningless metric if not accompanied with a large amount of qualification.
What is meant by "without new gas"? Without LNG shipments? Without local/European produced NG? Or just without Russian NG imports? Without any imports?
What does it mean "to go"? To consume at some historical rate? Consumption varies with NG prices - recently consumption has been curtailed as a result of high NG prices. At a macro scale, NG consumption has been falling. Europe-wide annual consumption is about 20% less than it was 10 years ago.
And an unqualified time answer - say one month, for example - would be meaningless as the rate of gas consumption is highly seasonal at various scales (daily, weekly, annually). A winter month is not equal to a summer month for example.
> What is meant by "without new gas"?
I guess that could all be calculated and presented and give us an idea. The looming threat is Russia not giving us any of their gas now, other sources are "safe", so I guess that's the baseline: How long can we go without Russian gas?
> And an unqualified time answer - say one month, for example - would be meaningless as the rate of gas consumption is highly seasonal at various scales (daily, weekly, annually). A winter month is not equal to a summer month for example.
That's why I discerned between "average consumption days" and "timeframe from now on / day x on".
Russia has shut down pretty much all of their supplies, and here we are, filling the storage for the winter. Storage levels are average.
That's probably about as close as you can get to having an idea. You might also have a look at the graphs at bruegel, but that wont help all that much.
It's very vague, but so is the situation.
What's rarely mentioned is that many European countries have massive reserves of recoverable shale gas but have banned fracking and are thus depending on imported gas...
That's one of the reasons the US are cashing in right now while Europe is having an "energy crisis".
Currently in EU renewable energy is practically 40%.
So there is zero point in digging holes in the ground. They can easily buy the rest and quickly grow renewable energy share (basically what they are doing now).
Europe is heavily dependent on gas, as the current situation painfully shows. It seems very premature to claim that there is "zero point digging holes in the ground" and odd to claim that they can "easily buy the rest" when energy costs are currently at crisis level.
Do you think that Qatar, UAE, Saudi and Iran are going to stop exporting natural gas imminently?
That's not the point, is it? Although they might depending on the circumstances (again, as we can see right now).
The point is that 'digging holes in the ground' isn't inherently more secure than making sure that you can import fuel from other countries.
Both involve a certain amount of risk and uncertainty. Both require preparation and planning, and some degree of subordination of other national interests.
This is perhaps one of the lessons of the Ukraine conflict - Russia is still exporting gas to Germany and Germany is still importing it, despite diplomatic relations between the two countries being at a nadir. It's simply not in either country's interest not to carry on with the commercial relationship.
IDK if this comment is sarcastic or not, but this whole situation is due to Europe being naive about buying gas 'easily'.
That seems to high, I came up with 12.4% primary energy in 2021 and 22.1% gross final energy in 2020 after a quick search.
I don't know if it's the case here but sometimes numbers for 'energy' are quoted when they really are numbers for 'electricity'.
it's interesting but percent value don't tell much, it depends of stockage capacity.
It would be interesting to know the end game here.
If the Ukrainian war ends, I assume that isn't the end of it. I assume the taps from Russia will turn back on, but it has shown itself to be an unreliable supply.
There is an emergency plan being executed and expedited to reduce total gas demand by 30%, which just happens to be the amount Europe imports. With half of that 15% this winter.
Reducing energy consumption will only lead to impoverishment.
Citation needed.
Not all reduction of consumption decreases output. For example, leaks could be plugged, insulation can be improved, more efficient machines could be used.
Also, not all output is equal, not does all output have to be done at a fixed time. Heating homes has to be done during winter, but some factories can postpone production a few months to wait for more favourable circumstances.
Furthermore, it's only a reduction in a few energy sources that are required, with gas being the most important. Other sources could be used to compensate to an extent. We're seeing some gas power plants moving back to coal for example. Not great for carbon emissions, but it has more and more flexible sources.
For example, a lot of cities in Germany cut back on indoor pools this summer, and are considering it for the winter.
Sounds trivial, but keeping 25m long indoor pool 23-24 degrees in the winter takes a lot of energy.
It would suck for people who had gotten used to them being open again after the Covid years, but wouldn’t have much negative economic impact.
In France indoor ice rinks are getting closed too. Again, it's trivial but they consume lots of energy.
So will permitting extortion of an entire continent by a dictatorship.
The goal is not to permanently ration. The goal is to get through the winter, so there’s time for the longer term fixes to be put in place.
Fortunately, not all energy consumption is gas.
Please tell me how keeping your house at 70 degrees and wearing warm clothing instead of 72 degrees and wearing a t-shirt is impoverishment.
If you look at the current plans in most countries, they're largely about reducing waste and excessive usage. I mean... you could consider not being allowed to heat your private swimming pool "impoverishment", but probably only if you were comically wealthy and entitled.
(I'm actually a little surprised just _how_ un-aggressive the plans generally are.)
This is going to be an "at your own risk" thing. If a country wants to build its economy around energy supplies from a regime that has shown it can and will use the energy tap as leverage and as a weapon, don't run crying back to mommy. I think everyone understands that.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/08/02/hysata-brings-capilla...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511...
Throw in some <$100/kWh 4-12hr storage, and it's starting to look really appealing to make your own.
Hopefully the end game will be to see this as an opportunity to do something against climate change and lower the gas consumption permanently. I doubt that will happen though.
Me too. A flagging economy would make capital investments in green energy even more difficult. If China decides to sanction us we will also lose access to most of the underpriced green energy. A flagging economy, no gas and skyrocketing solar panel/wind turbine prices will mean a lot more coal.
Europe didnt make enough hay while the sun was shining.
I think Russian bet is that Europe would take 3-7 years to shift dependence away from Russian gas and that in the mean time a lack of access to cheap energy will lead to economic collapse, which will ultimately make the shift even harder. Putin is not testing our resolve but our ability.
I suspect the goal is also also to trigger conflicts between EU member nations over energy scarcity. E.g. Germany has enough gas to last Germany for the winter so it prioritizes Germany and throws Lithuania under the bus so Lithuania lashes out, etc. A short term scarcity will lead to long term fractures - maybe even EU exits.
Meanwhile, this opens the door for politicians who will make peace with Russia and bring the gas taps back online and revive a sputtering economy - a role that Orban seems to be trying to fill pre-emptively.
Mm. Plausibly what they think.
I don't know when countries typically shift from economic conflict to kinetic conflict, but I hope that Russian intelligence isn't dumb/arrogant enough to assume that transition has zero probability.
Russia hoping for European economic collapse would be just as stupid as Europe hoping for Russia's economic collapse.
They are too entangled at this point for either to survive the collapse of another.
> I assume the taps from Russia will turn back on
Why? The current trend is to work hard in order to reduce any form of business with Russia that would help them to rebuild the army and become a threat again.
I assume that turning the taps back on would be seen as a short-term thing in order to fill storages and avoid short-term economic/humanitarian domestic issues. There's surely no country left left in the EU that considers Russia to be a tolerable long-term trading partner, except maybe for Hungary.
I don't think even Hungary trusts Russia as a trading partner... they just see them as useful to Hungary.
Especially right now, when they can leverage the Russian situation and annoy the EU by striking favorable deals.
And just after that quote I said:
>but it has shown itself to be an unreliable supply
Russia is using gas to try and keep Europe out of the conflict. Once the war ends that ceases to be a motivator. Thus I assume they will turn the taps back on. That doesn't mean we want to rely on it which is the whole point of the question. Victory in Ukraine doesn't end this, so what's the end game. Is there going to be a further push for renewables? Gas from other sources? What's the time frames?
> Russia is using gas to try and keep Europe out of the conflict.
But it's not working, is it? Practically the whole Europe is helping Ukraine, sending weapons and everything we can to help.
It's not the question of how much gas Russia offers, it's the question of how much Europe is willing to take from them. Russia's status is very close to North Korea now - it's just unethical to make business with a state that got mentally stuck in XIX century and still thinks killing innocent people to grab more land is a good strategy.
I didn't say it was working.
I'm not saying we're going back to russian gas. Again that's the point of the question!
I assume countries in the EU will no longer eschew longer gas contracts in favor of the spot market. The contracts have always been available and you might not have much faith in Russia any more but Europes second largest gas provider, Norway is still here. It's only a matter of making the choice.
A view from Germany:
Up to Russian invasion this February: old oil furnaces were being avidly replaced with natural gas ones. Solar installations were starting to slack off. Lots of re-roofing and new exterior wall insulation.
Since then: no slacking in the roofing and exterior wall insulation, but now everyone has a keen interest in heat pumps, and solar panels are being installed everywhere.
Gonna be hard to convince people to take their chances again with a fuel from such an unreliable source in the next few years, I think, especially if this is a bad winter and rationing happens.
I'm currently renovating a house. My government are offering subsidies if you disconnect your gas supply and go all-electric. We'll be doing that alongside full solar (possibly with battery) and heat-pumps for heating/cooling.
Be careful though: there are regions in the EU where electricity prices went crazy up. I know people who had a fixed plan at 120 EUR / month from an electricity company that went belly up who needed to take a new plan. My brother went from 120 EUR / month to 400 EUR / month for his electricity bill. Sister-in-law got 6 K EUR year-on-year adjustment for her electricity bill (so 500 EUR more per month on average). And a friend, for a big house granted, went from 120 EUR / month to 800 EUR / month.
Few people want to plan ahead (and spend the money that goes along with being prepared)... until they are in trouble.
I won't say that good things have come from this war, but it certainly is a wake-up call for countries to get their future plans in better order.
There is simply no excuse for the most industrially advanced country in the world (Germany) to have slacked off so much when it comes to energy. It must be some political angle, because not too many years ago Germany was one of the leaders in expanding their renewable energy sources.
> Since then: no slacking in the roofing and exterior wall insulation, but now everyone has a keen interest in heat pumps, and solar panels are being installed everywhere.
France here... Seeing how things were turning in May I turned my open fireplace into a closed one (way better efficiency) and ordered metric shit-tons of dry wood (I've now got enough for at least two years). Thankfully my house ain't using natural gas at all so at least I'm dodging that one problem. Now electricity may be rationed this winter: dunno, we'll see. But at least I won't be dying of cold.
Heating oneself burning wood has this advantage that it's stone-agey enough: chop a tree into smaller pieces, let them dry for a year, you can heat now heat your house during winter.
And nobody can "ration" me / prevent me from putting wood in the fireplace: that's the "stone age" part of it. The main french electricity company, on the other hand, is ran by state apparatchiks and if they decided to ration electricity (because, by "chance", half of the nuclear reactors are all simultaneously down), I'm pretty much sorry out of luck.
Overall I'm pretty disappointed by the EU (I'm an EU citizen) and plan to GTFO. I tried last year but it failed (residency was hard to obtain where I tried to go) but I'll very probably try again.
EDF is certainly run by state apparatchiks, but it's hard to argue that they haven't done a pretty good job making electricity available cheaply and plentifully to French consumers.
EDF is mostly doing a good job especially considering how the EU competition regulation hinders them but they seriously screwed up with the nuclear power stations maintenance situation.
> because, by "chance", half of the nuclear reactors are all simultaneously down
What do you mean with the quotes? It's not by chance, it's due to backlogged maintenance (due to Covid) and some corrosion issues in a few reactors. The plan is to have all maintenance over before the winter.
Really hoping to see power2gas facilities scale up. Gas storage seems like the most credible solution for stable, season-scale, grid-scale energy storage. Of course there are large conversion inefficiencies in a chain like wind->electricity->electrolysis->hydrogen->CCGT, but that’s where massive overbuilding of renewable generation capacity comes in.
The UK is aiming to have 50GW of wind capacity by 2030. It needs at least 300GW to decarbonize and ensure energy security.
Gee, it looks like that if we don't sell anything (but with this gov you never know) we (as in Netherlands) might be dodging the proverbial bullet this winter.
But I am personally counting on the fact that this gov will fuck up as usual ... always plan for the worst, then it can only be better...
This is strange, everything I heard is that Germany is in trouble with the gas situation but here it seems they have the most stored gas? Is this correct in content and meaning?
Lots of European countries are having trouble with gas, Germany was (IMHO) singled out due to being content about their situation of being reliant on russia (see NS2) before the invasion.
Other variables come into play as well. A mild and windy (lots of wind power) would help keep energy cost lower. From what I have seen, currently energy cost are expected to triple however worst case scenario could be 10-15 times increase. The effects on society and economic would be enormous.
They also have the largest population, produce no gas, have no LNG import capacity and have a bunch of industries built around cheap natural gas. Storage isnt the whole picture.
We are/were even exporting gas-produced electricity to France because so many of their nuclear plants were failing.
edit: Here’s a source: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/germany-expor...
Germany secret: They went into panic buy mode and started severely overpaying for gas in order to secure all of the supply they might need. This not only made gas more expensive for everyone else, but also influenced electricity prices.
If climate change doesn’t bless Europe with a warmer winter this year I see no way that a bunch of people won’t freeze to death.
At least in Germany, not everyone uses gas heating - lots of domestic and institutional oil furnaces and tanks still around, like the recently-filled one in our basement that holds two bad winters’ worth of luxurious (21-22 C) warmth, or four normal winters’ worth of careful (18-19 C) usage. If needed, we can clamp down even further, closing off some rooms.
My husband’s parents switched to gas two years ago when their old oil furnace finally became irreparable, so my husband set them up with a diesel heater in their bedroom with enough fuel for two or three days, and the intention of bringing them down here in the worst case.
I’m sure that families and friends all over Germany and the rest of the EU have similar plans.
Why?
Aside from maybe the coldest two weeks, the climate is not even uncomfortable if you are inside (no wind or precipitation), wear thick clothing, and move a little. If you do physical labor, you're going to be sweating.
Nobody is going to die from cold in western Europe's semi-oceanic climate, even without any gas at all. For the vulnerable, there's plenty of alternative fuels. But we do have gas and lots of it, so this seems entirely baseless.
So I guess the talk of Europe having a hard winter coming up is entirely overblown.
As somebody who lives there and knows what's it like to be in a unheated apartment: Rest assured, yes it is.
And the fearmongering serves the interests of some people, of course.
Economic disruption and having to keep our homes and offices a few degrees cooler than we’re used to will make this a “hard winter” for the two or three generations of western Europeans largely used to staying as warm as they like and general prosperity.
But not “hard winter” in terms of people freezing to death. Even if all gas were cut off (and it isn’t, Norway is still exporting) too many of us still have oil heating and/or wood-burning stoves, and are not completely anti-social.
Plus, as another commenter said, it’s not that cold in a lot of Europe all winter long.
And the places that are? Why, they’re the ones most motivated not to let Putin have his way with their countries and were the angriest with Germany over Nordstream - the Baltics and Poland.
My heater was broken one winter, so I had a completely unheated apartment for quite a while in germany.
It's not cosy, but far, far from freezing to death.
Countries further north do not use gas for heating, countries further south do need it even less to stay above something tolerable.