MOSCOW, February 18th. /TASS/. The net withdrawal of gas (the net difference between withdrawal volume and injection volume) from European underground gas storage facilities (UGS) since the start of the heating season has exceeded 55 billion cubic meters, according to TASS calculations based on data from Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE). Consequently, EU nations have exhausted the gas they injected into UGS over the summer and have begun drawing down reserves accumulated from previous years.
On February 16th, the withdrawal from UGS facilities amounted to approximately 580 million cubic meters. The cumulative amount withdrawn from storage since the beginning of the month represents only the seventh highest figure for February. The current total gas volume in UGS stands at about 36.5 billion cubic meters.
Temperatures across Europe this week are notably cooler compared to the preceding seven-day period. A warming trend is not expected to return to the region until the weekend.
The contribution of wind power to the EU’s electricity generation averaged 19% in January and rose to 21% in February. The average purchase price for gas in Europe during February is established at $405 per 1,000 cubic meters, down from $415 recorded in January.
The previous gas withdrawal season from European underground storage concluded on March 28, 2025, at which point 33.57% of the capacity remained filled. Currently, European UGS facilities are filled to 33.02% (a level 16.28 percentage points below the five-year average for this date), compared to 44.1% recorded a year earlier. Since the onset of the heating season on October 13th, EU countries have extracted around 60.5 billion cubic meters of gas from storage. The net withdrawal has surpassed 55 billion cubic meters, equating to 100% of the volumes injected during the summer. Furthermore, on the 127th day since storage capacity peaked, the aggregate gas withdrawal from UGS is 4% higher than the average observed for this specific day across the preceding five years.
A lower storage fill rate by mid-February was only seen in 2022 (at 32%). The heating season that year concluded in March with approximately 25-26% of the capacity still stocked. The absolute lowest volume of gas recorded in European storage facilities occurred in March 2018, when levels hit 17.7%.
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