By Nicholas Earl
Europe should watch out for a cold freeze this winter and supply shortages, warned the head of Kremlin-backed gas giant Gazprom, despite the continent having almost filled its storage facilities.
Chief executive Alexey Miller said: “Winter can be relatively warm, but one week or even five days will be abnormally cold and it’s possible that whole towns and lands, god forbid, will freeze.”
Speaking at the Russian Energy Week in Moscow, he argued that gas in Germany’s underground storage only will be enough for between two and two-and-a-half months.
Citing unidentified experts, he calculated that Europe could lack 800m cubic meters of natural gas per day, or one third of its total consumption heading into spring.
Gas inventories across the European Union are currently around 91 per cent full, according to data from ASGI+.
However, he believed the “energy crisis has come not for a short period of time” and that European facilities could be drained to just five per cent capacity by March.
He said: “Europe will survive, but what will happen by the time of gas injection” into storage before winter of 2023 and 2024.
Gazprom has been cutting deliveries to Europe for months amid disputes over rouble payments and pipeline maintenance.
The EU has accused the company of cutting supplies retaliation to Western sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which the Kremlin has denied.
The economic warfare between West and the Kremlin has resulted in swingeing cuts to Gazprom supplies, with the Nord Stream pipeline offline and disruption to gas flows into dozens of European countries.
Gazprom previously supplied Europe between 600m and 1.7bn cubic meters per day during the period of peak winter demand.
Earlier this month, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted global gas markets will remain tight into 2023, as Europe competes with Asia for liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies.
This is despite an expected tumble in European demand, with a 10 per cent contraction on the continent expected to drive a 0.8 per cent decline in global consumption this year.
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