In the latest auction, Germany's SEFE was unable to allocate space for gas storage at Rehden.
The German gas company SEFE announced on Tuesday that it was unable to allocate any of its offered natural gas storage spaces at its northern German Rehden facilities for the 2025/2026 period during its latest auction.
SEFE offered 3 terawatt-hours (TWh), the largest gas storage site in Germany, as its capacity. It said this was the last chance to secure enough volumes to reach a target of 45% by November.
Germany is the largest natural gas consumer in Europe.
The German gas storage targets were reduced earlier this year. The goal for cavern storages is 80% by November 1; the target for most porous storages (which are reservoirs of porous rock) is 45%.
Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) data shows that Rehden has a storage capacity of 26.91%, while the German total is 74.08%.
Rehden is a porous site that takes longer to fill up than the caverns, which make up most German storage sites.
SEFE struggled in recent weeks to allocate Rehden capacities at several auctions because the economic incentives weren't strong enough. Gas storage requires a discount when filling up to the price of the gas in winter.
In a recent note, Arne Rasmussen said that the current price gap between gas prices now and winter's expected prices is not large enough to encourage people to fill up their storage tanks. (Reporting from Ludwig Burger in Berlin, Nora Buli and Nina Chestney in Oslo)
(source: Reuters)
