Germany’s Gas Storage Could Be Depleted After A ‘Few Freezing Cold Days,’ Energy Regulator Warns
Reuters: “Germany’s gas storage facilities could be quickly emptied if this winter gets really cold.”
With winter fast approaching, it will only take a “few freezing cold days” to empty Germany’s stored gas reserves, country’s energy and gas regulatory agency warns.
While Germany’s gas storage levels are currently well over 90 percent of their capacity, these “storage facilities could be quickly emptied if this winter gets really cold,” Reuters reported Friday citing Klaus Mueller, head of Germany’s national energy regulatory authority (Die Bundesnetzagentur).
As Russia ceases to be Europe’s main gas and oil supplier following the Western sanctions in response to its invasion of Ukraine and the blowing up of the Russo-German Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea five weeks ago, Germany struggles to keep its citizens warm and its economy running in the winter months.
Reuters reported German regulator’s grim warning:
Germany’s gas storage facilities could be quickly emptied if this winter gets really cold, warned the head of the country’s network regulator in an interview with Spiegel weekly on Friday.
“Just a few freezing cold days are enough for a dramatic increase in gas consumption,” Klaus Mueller said.
Mueller’s Bundesnetzagentur would be in charge of gas rationing if it came to it, a scenario Germany wants to avoid at all costs via regular pleas to cut consumption by at least 20%.
As of Nov. 2, Germany’s gas storage levels stood at 99.3% and Mueller said that Europe’s top economy could keep going for around 9-10 weeks were it solely to rely on those tanks – provided it’ll be a mild winter as was the case in 2021/2022.
Search for new gas suppliers and other energy sources comes at a high price, with household energy bills soaring since the slashing of the cheap gas supply from Russia.
Describing the “skyrocketing” energy prices, German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported Wednesday:
To fill the gap left by Russia, Germany has had to buy gas and other energy alternatives on the expensive spot market. This has led to higher prices for consumers. Today an annual gas contract for a German household costs 173% more than it did a year ago, according to energy price portal Check24. That’s €3,726 ($3,702.15) for an average annual consumption of 20,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh), compared to €1,365.
With ordinary Germans struggling to pay their energy bills, many are turning to firewood to heat their homes.
Authorities are reporting a surge in timber theft from German forests. “More wood is being stolen from German forests. The reason is the high energy prices and the shortage of firewood. The Forestry departments are responding with more controls, and forest owners are reporting of increasingly brazen thefts,” the Germany’s main state-run TV channel ARD reported recently.
The energy crisis is not limited to Germany alone, and isn’t going to end anytime soon. Entire Europe faces a massive energy crunch as the year comes to a close, latest news reports suggest.
The Associated Press reported Thursday that if the supply crunch continues, “Europe could face a severe natural gas shortage next year.”
Judging by the current trends, “Europe could face a shortfall of 30 billion cubic meters of gas next summer, the key period for filling supplies ahead of the winter heating season, when there is stronger demand for the fuel,” the AP added.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Jerry may be praying for some globull warming now.
In less than 100 years, the Russians rout the Germans again.
This time, people will die, and not a shot will be fired.
President Trump warned them and they laughed at him. They aren’t laughing now are they?
A perfect moment of schadenfreud.
Yup, typical arrogant Lefties. They’re all “smart” until the crap hits the fan.
They were warned. They laughed. Let them freeze. I’ll laugh.
I wonder if anyone in Europe is taking precautions now.? How about a 55-gallon barrel stove sitting outside with a simple heat exchanger on top, draped with 6 , 8, or 12″ thick bats of rockwool insulation and a water-antifreeze loop running into the building? In fact, several more 55-gallon barrels can sit in the home as heat storage radiators. All combustibles can be used.
What’s the big deal here? This isn’t another Stalingrad moment.
The Eastern Front has move to the west.
Many more people freeze to death than from warm homes.
They hate us. Their problem leaves me cold, no pun intended.
It’s no wonder they’re knocking down fields of wind turbines in order to mine more coal.
Don Quixote would be proud. Gives a whole new meant to “tilting at windmills.”
I would have thought the greenies would be happy with this opportunity to demonstrate the wonders of life without nuclear or fossil fuels.
Lets see how the voters feel about that whole no fossil fuel thing when the thaw out next spring.
Wasn’t it just yesterday that Brandon was relishing closing down coal-fired power plants?
Cold and hungry.
Sounds so pre-war.
No Berlin Airlift this time.
Sorry, they’re not desperate yet.
When they persuade the Dutch to open the NG field in that country (yes, Netherlands has large NG deposits which they refuse to touch), then they’re desperate.
When they start working to re-open the nuclear plants they shuttered, then they’re desperate.
When they build LNG receiving ports in Hamburg, then they’re desperate.
They’re not desperate. Yet.
Noting that the time it takes to do any of those things is measured in years. So they will be even more desperate.
Subotai Bahadur
Come spring, will there be any trees left in Europe?
The European govts aren’t but the populace is figuring out what’s coming so they certainly are. The problem isn’t just residential heating but their industry. Shutdown the industry to conserve gas for residential heating and now people are laid off. Now the govt has another problem, increased social spending while the plants are idle.
The only way out of the hole is to stop digging by lifting the sanctions and eating a plate of crow but since someone decided Nord Stream should be taken offline that’s not a quick solution. The Europeans are in a mess, financially, militarily and the have no real way to change course that their current govts view as acceptable.
In the dictionary, “Despot” quickly follows “Desperate.”
The dark sarcasm of Green is that it is neither green, nor renewable, nor reliable, nor affordable, nor available. One step forward, two steps backward.
Looks like a “mud-hutter” down voted you. They won’t be happy until the population is down to 1 billion again.
I see a lot of people who demand reduced populations, but few volunteers from that same group.
Real “diversity” is robust, resilient, and adaptive.
They’ve been going for the wrong kind of “diversity”, it seems.
“few freezing cold days”
In other words, until the end of November.
I don’t see why they’re worried. With the global warmening they have nothing to be concerned about. In fact, IIRC, there will be no more snow on the ground.
Reality has a way of eventually biting reality deniers in the ass. I’m going to enjoy the winter, and I’ll be nice and cozy while I laugh at the assholes that laughed when the president of the United States warned them.
Unfortunately for Germany (and the rest of us), the rational expectation going forward (including this winter), is for global cooling, not global warming. Post Little Ice Age warming seems to have been caused by 250 years of on-average high solar magnetic activity (an average sunspot number of about 80).
That was preceded by about 400 years of low solar activity (average SSN of about 40), that corresponded with the centuries of cooling (the Little Ice Age), that bottomed out in the late 1600s.
These long periods of correlation between solar activity and global temperature change are the strongest evidence we have for the cause of these changes. They seem to have been caused by the sun.
In contrast, there is ZERO evidence that LIA cooling and post LIA warming had anything to do with CO2, which didn’t start undergoing any major anthropogenic increase until about 1950. That makes the CO2 theory of climate change a stinking heap of anti-scientific garbage.
It has no explanation for what cause pre-1950 warming and hence no way of saying that this cause, whatever it was, did not continue after 1950, yet they confidently assert that post 1950 warming can only have been caused by human increments to CO2. Lying morons.
Actually, solar activity remained quite high until the end of the 20th century. Some solar scientists describe the high levels of solar activity from about 1920 to about 2000 as a grand maximun of solar activity, but whether it was grand maximum or merely high, it could easily explain late 20th century warming, which like the rest of post-LIA warming has been a happy development for mankind.
Since then the scene is not so propitious. In about 2005 the sun dropped into a deep minimum phase that looks like it could be the beginning of another extended low, which according to the solar theory says we should expect cooling any decade now, and since this is the far better evidenced theory of climate change, this is the rational expectation going forward.
We are now about 17 years into the current low-solar period, and if you look at Roy Spencer’s satellite-based “Global Temperature Update” page you’ll see a slight downward trend in global temps for the last 5 years.
Ocean oscillations dominate decadal temperature change, but cooling should start showing up any decade now, and it could already be here.
Check out research of Professor Valentina Zharkovha’s solar cycle.
If you dig around the USGS website, you can find articles (real science) that shows sea levels during the last interglacial, roughly 120K years ago, to be 6.6-8.3 meters higher than it is now.
During the last glacial period, 18K years ago, sea levels were approx. 125 meters lower than now.
Bottom line: sea levels and climate have fluctuated wildly on this planet, all without the assistance of mankind.
We are at the end of the current interglacial. I believe that a little global warming might stave off the next glacial period.
Win-win, as far as I can tell.
Can’t the invincible Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine just invade Russia?
More likely a whole lotta people will be channeling their inner Hun in a few months.
IMO – FUEL is the most valuable commodity for a nation. Trump had the U.S. in a great position when we were exporting oil. This is so obvious. We (the U.S.) have the potential to be self-sustaining, benevolent, and prosper all at the same time. Maybe if/when all 3 branches go conservative again?
Under the steady leadership of President Biden, the world is entering a new phase of prosperity, security and abundant energy — warmth, happiness, a glow of community cooperation and good will to all. Plus no mean tweets! It is our good fortune to witness this miracle of unbridled human achievement.
/do I really hafta?
And then I woke up only to find that the president of the US is a card carrying member of the KKK, who likes to shower with his daughter, whose son is a drug addict setting foreign policy, and a wife who goes by “doctor.”
Referencing mean tweets, we don’t have those. But we do have “Dark Brandon” who stands on stage screaming like Der Fuhrer, lacking in a mustache and panache.
Banners, fool, you need calligraphic-brush banners to sell this stuff.
Wait till the Germans realize that it was the Brits and the Americans who destroyed the pipeline and made the shortages impossible to avoid, hungry and shivering in the dark as they decide how to respond.
Knight takes pawn is a bitch when you’re the pawn.
Another click bait headline. This is pure speculation and has zero basis in facts. The last 6 winters here in Central Europe have been extremely….MILD!
Not only are the gas storage reservoirs around Europe almost full (over 90%) but are never drawn down through the winter enough to cause any problems. On top of that, there are LNG container ships lined up at European ports to unload even MORE Natural Gas (NG).
Germany, The Netherlands, and Belgium all have newly landed LNG degasification facilities with ships currently unloading. The NG from 2 of those locals in Holland and Belgium is even coming here to the Old Czecho-Slovakia.
Our NG price was fixed until 2023 when we can negotiate again for the new year. Our home is heated by NG but we can also have electric heaters as almost 60% of the electricity in Slovakia is generated right here by our own nuclear reactors.
I would suggest you bone up DAILY on the price of oil and NG. Bloomberg Energy has a daily 5 minute update on same. And, spare us the click bait headlines.
I’ve stated, before, that vile, idiotic and unapologetic crone, Merkel — who, in her obnoxious and imperial arrogance refuses to concede any fault on her part in naively and foolishly enabling and appeasing Putin — should be rendered down to fat, to provide Germans with a few hours worth of lamplight.
Merkel would provide Germans with more valuable service in this role, than she did in sixteen destructive years as their chancellor.
Aaaaaaaand, it’s completely fabricated.
Energy supply and availability *is the easy case.* You have to actively work to screw this one up; and have some luck.
None of this had to be; not even close.