The French gas sector has expressed “calm” attitude towards the coming winter, as its stocks are already full, despite the cessation of Russian gas transit via Ukraine on Thursday during a press conference. “To date, we are rather calm about the passage of the coming winter, we are in roughly the same conditions as last year, even slightly better, as the warehouses are about 90% full,” said Sandrine Meunier, CEO of GRT Gaz, France’s main gas transport operator and Europe’s second largest transporter.
“Since 2022, there has been a lot of anticipation about the filling of warehouses,” added Laurence Poirier-Dietz, CEO of GRDF, the main gas distribution operator. He stressed that the 90% stock fill level was previously observed “much later in the season, around October or mid-November”. “We have a secure winter of 2024-2025 and, depending on market prices, the building up of stocks will be done in the most sensible way, but today we are not on alert on these issues for our winter,” concluded Laurence Poirier-Dietz.
Uncertainty over supply to European countries in the medium term
Following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the drastic reduction in Russian supplies, the twenty-seven member countries of the European Union adopted a legislative framework in June 2022 requiring them to collectively achieve a 90% fill rate of their gas storages by 1 November of each year. The aim was to strengthen their energy autonomy and reduce their dependence on Russian gas supplies. According to the latest available readings, as of 10 September, France had almost 92% of its storage capacity and EU countries had an average of 93%.
While this dependence has been significantly reduced since February 2022 and the start of the Russian-led war in Ukraine, thanks to the increasing use of ship-borne liquefied natural gas and Norway’s rise in pipelines, Russia continued to supply gas to Europe via Ukraine. But President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on 27 August that Ukraine would not renew its contract with Russia until 31 December, creating some uncertainty about European countries’ supplies in the medium term.
Source: BFM TV
