Mith the first strong rays of sunshine in the year, the gas storage facilities in Germany fill up again. The storage facilities are intended to bridge the greater heating requirement in winter and must therefore be filled in the summer months. At the same time, they represent a reserve in case the main supplier Russia no longer supplies – or an embargo prohibits it. Ever since Russia turned off the gas supply to Poland and Bulgaria, the question of how secure the energy supply still is has become all the more important.
If the gas storage tanks are full, a quarter of the annual consumption can be stored here. While the storage tanks are 34 percent full on average in Germany, a large gas storage facility in Rehden in Lower Saxony remains at a filling level of 0.5 percent. This is owned by the Russian energy company Gazprom and hardly helps security of supply. Gazprom can no longer do as the state company likes. Since April 4, the Federal Network Agency has taken over Gazprom Germania, Gazprom’s German business, as trustee: These include the gas trader Wingas, a stake in the gas transport company Gascade and the gas storage operator Astora, which operates the storage facility in Rehden.