With just over 100 days until the start of the new winter gas season, and despite uncertainty over how the ongoing Moscow-Kiev gas dispute will affect European imports of Russian gas transiting Ukraine, the rate of gas injections in the key storage region of Germany remains little changed since the start of summer.
According to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe, German storage was 75.52% full Thursday, with 16.4 billion cubic meters of gas in stock.
Since April 1, regarded as the first day of summer gas season, Germany has been injecting gas into storage at a rate of 30 million cubic meters/day at its weakest and at 83 million cu m/d at its strongest, with the average daily rate standing at just under 55 million cu m.
In the past month, the rate has stood at 57 million cu m/d.
Were Germany to carry on injecting gas into storage at a rate around 55 million cu m/d, German gas stocks should be full by the second half of September, before the October 1 start of winter, with about 5.3 Bcm required to be injected before reaching full capacity.
With that same rate, German storage should be 90% full by August 15.
Withdrawals have been relatively limited, totalling 272 million cu m since April 1 and averaging 3.4 million cu m/d.
These stable rates indicate there has been no pressure for storage facilities in Germany to inject at a faster rate on the back of the Ukraine crisis, with Europe's markets continuing to be well supplied with gas despite Russia cutting off supplies to Ukraine at the start of the week.
Furthermore, Germany receives gas from Russia not only through the Ukraine-Slovakia-Czech Republic route, but also directly from Russia via the subsea Nord Stream pipeline and via Yamal, a pipeline traversing Belarus and Poland.
Morning nominations showed that Germany would receive 101 million cu m/d of Russian gas on Friday via Nord Stream and 84 million cu m/d via Yamal.
On August 15 and October 1 German storage was 68.34% and 82.96% full respectively, GIE data showed. However, a mild October allowed Germany to carry out robust injections into November, and by November 3 German storage was 91.46%, before withdrawals began to outnumber injections.
As a result of a mild 2013-14 winter, German storage was 58.35% full by the March 31, 2014 end of the season, compared with 21.52% full a year before.
