Putin's blackmail has failed. Europe is ready for winter

Just a year ago, the European Union was dreading winter, fearing whether it would be able to fill underground gas storages before the first frosts. But the community learned its lessons and enters the fall with almost full reserves. In 2022, such a situation was recorded in November.

The matter is reported by the portal rp.pl, which notes that on October 16th, European underground gas stores (UGS) were 97.95 percent full. This represents over 3.71 trillion cubic feet of gas, whereas the maximum infrastructure capacity is about 3.79 trillion cubic feet.

The situation is similar with Poland's reserves. According to Gas Storage Poland, the company that manages the national storage facilities, they are currently 99 percent full. The entity regularly updates on its website about the filling level of the facilities.

Expro.pl refers to the data of the Gas Infrastructure Europe association and reports that this is a record value in the entire history of observation. Even in 2022, PMG warehouses were filled until November 14th. At that time, the warehouses were 95.6 percent full (3.56 trillion cubic feet).

A year ago in September, barely 3.2 billion cubic meters (113.2 billion cubic feet) of blue fuel were injected into PMG. This is 62 percent less than in the same period the previous year. It was related to prolonged maintenance work in Norway. However, imports were resumed from the Scandinavian country in October and over the first two weeks, more than 2.1 billion cubic meters (74.2 billion cubic feet) of gas flowed to PMG.

Now, Norway was already a stable partner of the EU. Additionally, Brussels did not rest on its laurels and announced a program to construct new warehouses within the Union. Member countries are also more willing to use Ukrainian warehouses, where over 1.06 trillion cubic feet of gas can be stored, while this country needs approximately 353.1 to 494.4 billion cubic feet annually.

Thus, Europe managed to break the blackmail that loomed over the Union in 2022. Still, in the years preceding Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Union imported an average volume of approximately 4.9 trillion cubic feet of gas from the east annually.

However, Gazprom had already manipulated raw material supplies before the war, influencing their prices in the market. After attacking Ukraine, the company unilaterally broke important contracts with subsequent EU recipients, who did not agree to unilaterally changed conditions.