European gas storage has fallen further behind its usual pre-winter pace, with Germany just 47.6% full against a normal 75% for early August and the Netherlands at 38.5% against a typical 77%, fuelling fears that Europe will face yet another energy crisis of fuel shortages and high prices.

The Kremlin is clearly enjoying the EU’s discomfort. Head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev trolled Brussels on August 9 with a post on X framing the shortfall as a “self-made energy crisis” caused by Europe's attempt to ban imports of Russian gas completely by January 1.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was in on the game too earlier this year, putting the cat amongst the pigeons, by saying if Europe wants to ban imports then why should the Kremlin wait? “Let’s cut them off now,” he said.

The barb is pointed as Europe remains Russia’s biggest gas client, importing record amounts this year after starting 2026 with unusually low volumes in storage as the restocking season got under way.

EU tanks trailing the targets

The situation is not quite as bad as Dmitriev paints it – but it's not good either. It is true that the Europe-wide aggregate storage figure is at 15-year lows as of the start of August.

As IntelliNews Lambda, our analytical tool that models data and draws on our 20 years of archives, reported in early August the continent-wide storage stood at under 60% against a normal 75% -- the lowest level for the date since 2011 that has been widely reported.

The slow start to this year has been made worse by the hottest summer on record, a collapse in global LNG supply after Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG plant was hit at the start of the Iran war and the ongoing efforts by Brussels to try and ban imports of Russian gas completely by January 1.

The blisteringly hot summer has made everything worse. European countries withdrew almost 1bn cubic metres of gas from underground storage in July due to abnormal heat, according to GIE data.

Withdrawals came to 964mn cubic metres in July, 1.5 times higher than in July 2025 and the highest for the month since 2022, when 1.4bn cubic metres were pulled. At the same time, injection into storage totalled 8.8bn cubic metres, 16% lower than a year earlier. Net injection for the month came to 7.8bn cubic metres, the lowest for July since 2020, when the figure was 5.3bn cubic metres.

As of August 4, daily injection into European storage hit a record low for that calendar date since 2012. German storage facilities are less than 50% full and Dutch facilities less than 40%, while French storage stood at 54.7% as of July 27 — its lowest level for that date since 2017, according to calculations based on GIE data. Hungary is discussing energy-consumption restrictions for large companies to cut demand by 500 MW a day because of the heat. However, drilling into the individual country results for the first time, gives a more nuanced picture.

Business as normal

Storage across the EU stood at 58.1% full on August 5, according to Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) data - 15.6 percentage points below where the bloc would normally sit on that date, based on IntelliNews Lambda’s seasonal baseline built from 15 years of storage history.

The Fourier-curve model of the EU's seasonal storage cycle, fitted to 2011-2025 data with the crisis years of 2022 and 2023 stripped out, was recalculated this week, and broken out country by country rather than just for the EU as a whole. The model shows a continent splitting in two: some countries tracking close to a normal year, others falling far enough behind that catching up before winter looks next to impossible. Comparing the restocking for all of Europe against the 15-year baseline and it is clear that the effort is going badly.

But drilling into the individual markets and it is clear there is a big spread amongst EU members with some countries, like Poland (87%) and Italy (76.5%) already nearly meeting, or at least approaching, the mandatory 90% full tanks marks with several months still to go.

The laggards are Ukraine (30%, although it is not an EU member so not bound by the 90% rule), Netherlands (39.2%), Slovakia (45.4%), and Germany (47.9%).

Standard deviations

It’s clear that Poland already has enough gas to meet Brussels requirements and Italy will almost certainly get there soon. But just how far behind are the rest? One way of measuring it is to look at the standard deviation from the norms – a statistical measure of distance from the mean value. As a rule-of-thumb, two thirds of all results are usually one standard deviation (also known as a “sigma”) from the mean and 95% of all results are within two sigmas.

On that measure, Europe as a whole is not doing badly. The EU storage currently sits at -1.56 standard deviations as of August 5 - a meaningful shortfall, but not yet the kind of outlier that defines an actual crisis.

Lambda's baseline suggests that if restocking continues at “normal” rates, EU tanks could reach 89% by November 1, just short of the EU's headline target, and EU members having been buying gas at record rates in the first half of this year. Moreover, Brussels changed the rules: the amended Gas Storage Regulation now gives member states until December 1 to hit the 90% target, and allows them to fall as low as 80% if market conditions are unfavourable.

The following chart shows the nine major EU countries' current storage set against their 15-year baseline performance.

Judged in terms of sigmas and Poland is already ahead of the game by +0.28. Hungary sat 3.6 points ahead of its own baseline (+0.20) - though Hungary's normal trajectory never gets close to 90% even in a good year, since its own baseline only reaches 70.6% by November 1.

Italy and Austria look worse on paper than they really are. Italy's 76.7% is 5.1 points below its baseline, but that's only -0.95 standard deviations from the norm - well within normal variation.

Austria's headline gap looks alarming - 61.5% against a 70.1% baseline, an 8.6-point shortfall - but Austrian storage swings a lot every year and it is only -0.45 standard deviations from the mean.

France (-1.23 sigmas), Slovakia (-1.33 sigmas) and the EU aggregate itself (-1.56 sigmas) sit in a middle band: meaningfully behind, but not yet a statistical outlier.

So, most of the big EU markets are actually already looking good. The problem kids are Germany (-2.06 sigmas) and Netherlands (-2.47sigmas) – both have already crossed into crisis territory.

Tank size

Another factor that has to be taken into account is the volume of each country’s tanks. Poland’s tanks can hold a maximum of 3.5bcm of gas, a fraction of the EU’s total tank 105bcm capacity which is only supposed to supply the excess need from gas, as imports continue to arrive during the winter, to meet the total EU winter consumption of around 180-210bcm.

Poland can get to 90% fuel as it needs so little gas to fill them and relies heavily instead on its coal powered heating and power stations. Likewise. Slovakia's tanks are an equally tiny 3.5bcm although Italy’s are a substantial 19.3bcm. The other big hitters are France (11.7bcm), the Netherlands (13.6bcm) and the biggest of all is Germany (23.4bcm).

On paper Ukraine looks like an outlier, but its numbers are deceptive. It has by far the largest gas tanks in Europe, but that is a Soviet-legacy as its tanks were used to store gas headed to Europe customers in the winter when the Soviet Union was one of Europe’s biggest suppliers of gas so it needed huge tanks. Today it only needs tanks for its own domestic use and has massive overcapacity: it currently has some 9bcm of gas in storage against the 13bcm it typically consumes in winter (significantly reduced in wartime), or 70% of its needs, which makes Ukraine amongst those with the “fullest” tanks in Europe and on track to meet its needs this winter – if Russia doesn’t blow its energy infrastructure up again, which appears to be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan. Naftogaz has already reported more than 250 Russian strikes on its gas production facilities so far this year.

 

European gas storage tanks capacity
Country	Tank capacity (bcm)	In storage now (bcm)	% full	vs normal (pp)	Shortfall/surplus (bcm)
Ukraine	30.4	9.14	30.00%	10.9	#ERROR!
Germany	23.36	11.17	47.80%	-27.4	-6.39
Italy	19.28	14.8	76.70%	-5.1	-0.98
Netherlands	13.63	5.29	38.80%	-38.1	-5.2
France	11.75	6.95	59.20%	-12	-1.41
Austria	9.51	5.86	61.60%	-8.5	-0.81
Hungary	6.42	4	62.30%	3.9	0.25
Poland	3.5	3.03	86.80%	2.3	0.08
Slovakia	3.48	1.57	45.20%	-25	-0.87
source: IntellINews, 1 bcm ≈ 10.55 TWh

Taken all together then Germany is the weak link in the chain. It used to be a net exporter of power, until it closed its five nuclear power stations down in 2022 – now seen as a major strategic blunder. Its gas demand has been reduced by the ongoing deindustrialisation but it will still call on its neighbours for gas and Italy is especially vulnerable to German gas shortage problems.

As winter approaches, the Bundesrat approved the Electricity Supply Security and Capacity Act on July 10, creating the country's first mechanism to pay power plant operators for keeping generation capacity available rather than only for electricity sold — clearing the way for a new wave of gas-fired plants, expected online in late 2031 and 2032, and has reactivated its shuttered coal-fire plants as a back up.

In the meantime, most EU states continue to buy as much Russian gas as they can to stock up before it starts to get cold.