MOSCOW, September 2. /TASS/. Gas inventories in European underground storage facilities (UGS) are at their lowest level since records began in 2011, with one month to go before the traditional start of the heating season, posing a risk to gas supplies in the region, according to TASS calculations based on data from Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE).
Gas withdrawals from European storage facilities in August were the highest in five years at 771 mln cubic meters, up 11% from last year. At the same time, injections into UGS facilities fell by 8% to 10 billion cubic meters. As a result, total net injections, the difference between injection and withdrawal volumes, were 9% lower in August than a year earlier and among the lowest in 12 years at just 9.2 bln cubic meters.
At the end of August 2026, European UGS facilities were 65.39% full, 16.76 percentage points below the average for that date over the past five years, compared with 77.7% a year earlier. This was the lowest level for that date since records began in 2011. At the end of the month, EU storage facilities held around 71.5 bln cubic meters of gas, 14 bln cubic meters less than a year earlier and the lowest level since 2013. Gazprom forecast that gas inventories in European UGS facilities might not even reach 75% by the next heating season.
