The EU’s will fight the energy crisis by storing more gas in Ukraine

The EU’s will fight the energy crisis by storing more gas in Ukraine. With gas storage tanks in the EU already approaching full capacity and already over 70% full, the EU is considering making use of Ukraine’s extensive gas storage tanks, most of which are in the west of the country.  (chart)

While the EU has extensive gas storage facilities, with the bulk of them in Germany, Ukraine has much larger storage tanks as a legacy from Soviet times, that would add another 20% to the storage capacity. The biggest of the Ukrainian tanks is a whopping 17bcm – or about 15% of the entire winter’s consumption.

Though gas storage in Ukraine has become viable, the prices must be low enough to justify the costs, says Brussels. The EU is also likely to have to protect against potential war-related losses. The biggest Ukrainian gas tanks are in the west of the country, but there is another cluster in the east close to the front line and two smaller tanks are in Russian occupied territory.

According to EU directives, the tanks need to be 90% full by November 1^st to ensure winter supplies of gas. Adding the Ukrainian tanks to the reserve would add an addition buffer of stored gas to cope with a cold winter. Some 40mn cubic meters of gas from Russia is still transiting Ukraine every day despite the war.

The initiative is part of efforts to prevent last year's energy crisis. EU governments then allocated €646mn to help companies and consumers, but they are not in a financial position to repeat this aid.

Storing gas for Europe would bring much-needed revenue to Ukraine, strengthen ties with the bloc, and serve as an insult to Russia after the Kremlin tried to use energy supplies to weaken support for Kyiv.