The Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action is increasingly adopting a stance against establishing a potential state-owned gas reserve. According to an internal document from the ministry, which was obtained by the dpa news agency, the civil servants view such a measure as having only disadvantages.
The document, last revised on Easter Saturday, states that filling gas storage facilities through “Trading Hub Europe” sends “false market signals” and that responsibly managing the filling process should “fundamentally belong to the market”. Furthermore, the ministry points out that sufficient gas is available and that there is enough time to complete the filling before winter. As of now, 65 percent of the storage capacity is already booked, an improvement compared to the 52 percent recorded at this time in the previous year. The document also notes that prices remain highly volatile, leading to improved economic incentives, and that the summer-winter spread has shown improvement.
The internal paper, titled “Iran Crisis: Alternative Scenarios of Potential Overall Economic Impact on the Euro Area and Germany” outlines various potential measures and presents both arguments for and against each.
Separately, German gas storage operators had recently initiated a debate calling for measures to secure storage filling. In mid-March, Sebastian Heinermann, head of the “Energy Storage Initiative” (Ines), suggested that if the state were to consider building a strategic reserve, a capacity of approximately 78 TWh would be recommended. Such a state reserve could, according to Heinermann, compensate for “exogenous shocks-such as the failure of Norwegian import pipelines-over a period exceeding 90 days”.