Gas stocks connected to Germany's NCG market area have neared capacity, while facilities linked to the country's other market area, Gaspool, still have ample space to fill.
High-calorie gas stocks at sites located in NCG — but not directly connected to Gaspool, the Dutch TTF or Austria VTP — were 56.9TWh yesterday morning, just below the 57.5TWh a year earlier. These sites have a combined nameplate capacity of 58.8TWh, leaving about 1.9TWh of unfilled storage space (see NCG-linked empty space graph).
And most of this unfilled space is located at operator Uniper Energy Storage's (UES) Krummhorn site. UES stopped marketing capacity at Krummhorn in April 2017, with injections having last been made in October 2016. But withdrawals have continued since then, as the site has been emptied. Excluding the site has left only 576GWh of unused space.
In contrast, high-calorie stocks at sites located in Gaspool — but not directly connected to the NCG or TTF — remain well below capacity.
These sites held 85.6TWh yesterday morning, down from 91.9TWh a year earlier and much further below nameplate capacity of 93.7TWh. These sites could absorb substantially more supply than their NCG-linked counterparts over the rest of the summer and into early winter (see Gaspool-linked empty space graph).
NCG and Gaspool-linked storage sites each entered the summer similarly full, at just above 72pc for the NCG and almost 73pc for Gaspool. And injections to Gaspool sites have outpaced their NCG counterparts. But considerably higher storage capacity at the Gaspool-linked sites left the market area with much more space left unfilled.
But a substantial share of unused Gaspool-linked capacity may belong to Russian state-controlled Gazprom.
Most of the unfilled space is at the Astora-operated Rehden facility, where the Russian firm holds ample capacity. The firm likely used brisk withdrawals from storage capacity it holds in Europe in order to meet customer nominations over maintenance at its 55bn m³/yr Nord Stream pipeline on 14-25 July and at Mallnow on 6-10 July. Withdrawals at Rehden were particularly quick over the maintenance period, and continued following its completion, depleting inventories held at the site.
Rehden's stocks have been partly replenished since then. But stocks of 38.4TWh still were well below 43.3TWh on 1 July and capacity of 44.5TWh (see Rehden graph).
Excluding the site leaves only 1.89TWh of unused space at Gaspool-linked sites, much closer to the 576GWh left at NCG-linked facilities, excluding Krummhorn.
Overall German stocks — including at sites linked to both German market areas, the TTF and Austria VTP — were 214TWh yesterday morning, below the 219TWh a year earlier and still short of nameplate capacity (see German stocks graph).
