By P Gosselin
Looming crisis…
Experts are warning that Germany is heading into the heating season with dangerously low natural gas reserve fill levels. Currently, Germany’s gas reserve fill level stands at only 55%!
Normal for this time of year is 90%.
Last February, Germany’s natural gas reserve fill level dipped to a worrisome 20%, but late February warmth saved the day. In September, 2025, Germany the fill level had been 73%, — a level considered too low for mid September — yet still far above this year’s measly 55%.
Under average winter temperatures, a 77% starting level is projected to be enough to keep heating running and leave around 38% in storage by spring. So currently, with only 55%, a prolonged, a severe cold spell would mean daily withdrawal demands could outpace delivery capacity, creating potential shortfalls of up to 25% on peak days in January.
The concern surrounding Germany’s current 55% gas reserve fill level stems from a combination of strict operational constraints, market incentives, and the risk of severe weather. Due to slow injection speeds over the summer, operators have consistently failed to meet that daily rate. If current filling trends continue through autumn, analysts estimate reserves will peak at onl
In response to the warnings, Germany’s Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) insists that supplies remain secure. Total gas currently stored ~136 TWh still exceeds the total volume withdrawn across the entire previous winter (~134 TWh).
Failed government green energy policy
Alice Weidel, co-leader of the opposition Alternative for Germany (AfD), has framed the low gas reserve fill levels as a direct failure of the government’s green energy policy.
Weidel argues that the depletion of reserves and current low storage levels leave German industry vulnerable and increase energy prices. She contends that cutting off long-term reliance on cheap Russian pipeline imports—and relying instead on expensive LNG or renewable structures—has systematically weakened the nation’s infrastructure and economic stability.
“The so-called energy transition is the biggest millstone crushing our economy and dragging it into the abyss,” Weidel said. “Expensive, dysfunctional parallel structures are being subsidized while proven and cost-effective infrastructure is being systematically destroyed.”
Google says:
Germany has not implemented a government mandate to shut down active, productive domestic gas wells. Instead, Germany has actively sought to secure its energy supplies. However, individual energy companies continuously plug and decommission older, depleted, or uneconomical wells as part of standard lifecycles.
[1] (https://www.neowells.de/en/plug-abandonment/),
[2] (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-02/germany-gives-go-ahead-for-gas-drilling-in-protected-marine-zone)
Google does not tell the whole story. Its usual sources also say that the gas suppliers know that gas is unreliable compared with wind and solar, but keep quiet about it, while trying to quietly close their gas generation down before they are completely overtaken by wind and solar. These sources also say that gas is already uneconomic and the gas companies will be bankrupted by the next surge in supply of wind and solar, hence their attempts to pull out without being noticed by the general public.
My view is that Google should (a) develop a little more of the I in AI, and (b) change to reliable sources.
You are correct about Google. The truth is simpler. Energiewende forces CCGT to throttle back whenever renewables are available. As a result, CCGT runs severely underutilized and thus very unprofitable. In consequence, one of Germany’s largest utilities (RWE) split its renewable and CCGT assets, then spun CCGT off at a book loss a few years ago.
My view is that you shouldn’t use Google at all, I don’t believe a word of what it spouts.
Germany has relied on imported gas for many years.
Only about 2% of natural gas consumption in Germany comes from domestic sources, overwhelmingly it has been imported via LNG and pipelines from Russia (before Ukraine).
Domestic sources which in 2000 supplied ~20% of domestic consumption have been depleted over 20 years although fracking could open up new domestic sources if it were allowed.
In 2025 imported LNG supplied ~30% and non-Russian pipelines (e.g.from Norway Netherlands) supplied ~68% of domestic consumption.
To be able to afford heating in a German winter is such a “far-right” policy (sardonicism).
How about firewood?
Animal dung?
Dont say it too loud, because the German Greens might implement your suggestion!
I’d think that with much higher prices, those uneconomical wells might be economical?
Not only Germany. The Dutch next door are equally low on natural gas. But instead of being worried by it the geniuses just lowered the required levels.
Climate change policy, the policy that keeps on giving.
While Energiewende is arguably a proximate cause of the German natgas storage problem, it is not the direct cause.
The direct cause is Ukraine blew up Russia’s four Nordstream 1 and 2 pipelines. Germany cannot at present import Russian natgas even if they wanted to as AfD desires.
The proximate cause is Europe’s foolish green refusal to frack its nat gas shales. This is most apparent in the UK for both green and spurious ‘earthquake fear’ reasons. There is an estimated 16 TCF of European natgas shale resource, of which about 4 TCF is probably recoverable based on US present experience. The resource mainly underlies Germany, Denmark, Poland, France, and UK. Three of those countries lie directly adjacent to Germany itself, all already interconnected by Nordstream distribution pipelines from Germany.
If this coming winter becomes a real natgas problem, it will be self inflicted.
Actually the most proximate cause is Trumps ‘special military operation’ in Iran.
Gas out of the middle east is all but halted and its a BIG supplier
Can’t be – I’ve been told a dozen times that the USA is controlling the straight of Hormuz and that hundreds of ships are going through.
Though these ships can never be found on satellite photos. Must be some impressive stealth high tech.
So effective that the gas that is being trannsported is nowhere to be found.
The Ukrainians must have used the same tech to smuggle a ton of explosives throughout Europe to blow Northstream up as Biden has promised he’d do.
They must think “better dead than a carbon polluter”. 🙂
How many pensioners freezing to death will it take for them to change course? We do know from heat related summer casualties it is probably a hundred thousand or more.
I believe the British Geological Society said that the ‘earthquake’ effect of fracking that so spooked the anti frackers was the equivalent of dropping a large pumpkin from height.
Didn’t stop the Government from halting fracking at the same time as blowing up the coal fired power stations!
Different but equivalent published UK ‘earthquake’ calibration. The same as a loaded UK lorry on an A highway at legal speed 50 yards away. Scary!
What isn’t mentioned: When the capacity goes below 20%, line pressure stability problems occur. The last 20% isn’t easily available. So the real quantity available is effectively around 35% …
If God did not create perfect, ethical, moral beings (but at least showing the path to be one), how can we create a perfect being since we are fundamentally imperfect?
The same way we used imprecise machine tools to create progressively more precise ones.
WE managed to work up from chipped flints to semiconductor fabs.
Works with materials- not with humans.
What’s your point?
2)Evolution is not about perfection – otherwise most animals would start to look identical.Instead a high level of diversity is the norm.
It’s greatest achievement(according to unreliable, narcissistic sources) is actually a species that complains all the time about the imperfect nature of nature.
1) The woke are perfectly moral and ethical.
You know that.
And even if they turn out to be imperfect,
they are perfectly immune to all arguments contrary to their opinions.
You know that very well.
You can’t even define woke beyond “stuff i don’t like”. So maye stop using it.
Woke is the inability to think independently.
We have your idiot hind end. Illuminates like Diogenes’ lamp.
Why should we even be able to create beings, let alone perfect ones?
We can create things – and you can create for example perfect cubes on your computer and in real life
Oh look, the
annualweekly germany is DOOMED© article.Russian party wants more russian gas.
Well then, perhaps Germany should do more to get the Russians out of Ukraine, then rebuild those undersea pipes along with Europeans using their God given fossil fuels- so Europe will have an over abundance of cheap energy.
Long term energy security is only possible with renewables.
Fracking costs outweigh benefits for Germany and Europe, study says
https://www.euractiv.com/news/fracking-costs-outweigh-benefits-for-germany-and-europe-study-says/
You are incorrigible. 🙂
No It just evacuates from the wrong end
Then for Europe it’s not possible at all
In 2025 fossil fuels accounted for 86% of total energy supply according to the Energy Institutes 2026 Statistical Review of World Energy.
There are thousands of oil and gas fields around the world and considerable amounts of coal also.
Renewables are correctly called ‘unreliables’ for a reason.
Are you kidding? They aren’t “renewables” but they are “unreliables”!
They are called renewables ‘cos you have to renew them frequently.
Good one. The renewables will help wind and solar companies be sustainable! 🙂
““Expensive, dysfunctional parallel structures are being subsidized while proven and cost-effective infrastructure is being systematically destroyed.””
Sure, but depending on the Russians is strategically stupid. Trump tried to tell them that in his first term.
“Sure, but depending on the Russians is strategically stupid.”
Really? Well, during the cold war the Russians reliably supplied natural gas for decades. I think the “Empire of Good” is less reliable as far as German interests are concerned!
But regardless, the CO2 true believers want “Net Zero,” and they’re going to get their German “neo”-Neolithic era—with a “global average temperature” that is 0.0006°C lower! Well, at least for about 12 months, if China and India keep developing the way they are!
Nice that you must presume Putin has no desire to restore the Soviet Union and its empire. In the ’90s he said the worst thing that happened in the 20th century was the collapse of the Soviet Union. So, having any NATO nation dependent on Russian energy is indeed extremely stupid. Buying some is fine, but not to the level that Germany and other nations had done.
To my understanding there is a minimum reserve required to maintain enough pressure for the system to operate efficiently/effectively, it cannot be ran to zero, making the storage numbers noted in the article much more dire. At some point (e.g. 30% of full), industrial and commercial uses would be curtailed to prioritize sufficient pressure for home heating/cooking. In practice, the value could be higher than 30%, depending on weather forecasts, planned and enroute deliveries, direct impacts of curtailing industrial, risk appetite, etc.
Isn’t the most pure form of “clean energy” having no energy at all?
Seems that “Net Zero” means “all-in” to some players. 🤪
Ultimately it is the fault of the German people for electing a government that refuses to use German resources such as coal and refusing to use already built nuclear power. Instead they prefer to use intermittent sources such as solar and wind or depend on the goodwill of others to sell them gas, or to buy Nuclear power from the French and coal power from the Polish
Worse, until AfD last week, they have kept on electing such foolish governments for decades now going back to Merkel. No sympathy.
Yes. And we will sooner or later see something similar in the US as the Northeast of the country (New England and New York) have largely outsourced their reliable energy sources to Canada and other parts of the US. They have done this even as they demand more users switch to electricity for heat and transportation, thus creating more demand for imported electricity.
“Ultimately it is the fault of the German people…”
To keep this nonsense going, the parties in the government that have drifted to the left invented “our democracy”—a democracy of “guided thinking” (and voting, of course) fostered by “N”GOs, state-financed television and ms-media Those who hold the “correct” views make up “civil society” (“Zivilgesellschaft” a term coined by the Italian communist Gramsci as a euphemism for a supposed grassroots movement steered by communist cadres), while everyone else is—well, what else?—a Nazi.
That seems like political intention. Let the main people freeze and later blame them for not having built a windturbine in their garden and solar panels on their roof. Welcome to modern Germany!
But hey, you don’t need as much gas storage when imploding your industrial core economy.
Both of which bring about freezing in the dark.
Yet another reason why government shouldn’t be in charge of energy production or transmission. They really suck at it. If German energy companies were tasked with insuring that the German people, industries and businesses had ample energy for all seasons things like this wouldn’t happen because if it did heads would roll.
> The Trump Administration (2017–2021): Officials famously branded American LNG as “molecules of freedom”, lobbying heavily against Russian pipeline projects like Nord Stream 2. However, few European buyers committed because cheaper pipeline gas from Russia remained readily available.
Running short of gas? There’s only one prescription-
How gas could be banned from every Australian home under radical new proposal
The docs are only thinking of the kiddies.