Brussels (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – European Union nations are considering making the bloc’s binding gas storage goals more flexible, over suspicions that the rules risk inflating gas prices.
Countries including France, Germany, and the Netherlands have cautioned the EU’s binding deadlines to fill gas storage are forcing up prices, by pointing to the market that European buyers are obliged to purchase large volumes of fuel by fixed deadlines, making an opportunity to manipulate prices.
Member countries of the European Union are now negotiating shifts to the targets. The European Commission last week offered to keep the binding targets until 2027, but EU countries and the European Parliament can modify the proposal and must endorse the final rules.
What changes are being proposed for the EU gas targets?
A draft negotiating proposal, spread among EU nations, indicates that countries are considering revising the EU’s requirement to fill gas storage to 90% of capacity by November 1 each year. There could rather be a range of any time between October 1 and December 1.
The gas storage purposes were introduced in 2022 after Russia cut deliveries, to ensure the EU nations had a buffer of stored fuel during the winter months when the need for heating peaks. Another crucial element presented by the regulation is the burden-sharing tool. Some EU nations have storage installations larger than their own national consumption, while others do not have any storage facilities.
However, all European Union countries benefit from the guaranteed filling levels, so the burden-sharing instrument makes sure that not only EU countries with storage facilities pay for the security of supply expenses of the minimum filling target.
Gas storage facilities are essential for ensuring the protection of the gas supply. The required certification of all gas storage system operators was also raised to evade potential risks resulting from non-EU-country leverage over the storage infrastructure.
