Gas reserves in the Czech Republic are notably lower compared to last year. As of Monday, domestic storage is only 48 percent full, containing over 1.67 billion cubic meters of gas.
This marks a sharp drop from the 73 percent capacity at the same time last year. According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the reserves are depleting faster this year due to colder weather.
At the start of last autumn, storage levels were over 93 percent, surpassing the average levels of previous years. However, the heating season this year began a month earlier than last year, and the winter has been slightly colder. This has led to a quicker decline in reserves than in the previous year.
In the past seven years, 137 million cubic meters of gas have been withdrawn from Czech storage, a 21 percent increase compared to last year.
On a broader scale, gas reserves across the EU are depleting faster than in previous years. As of last week, EU storage was 59 percent full, down from 75 percent at the same time last year and 79 percent the year before. The European Gas Infrastructure Operators Association (Gas Infrastructure Europe – GIE) reports that Europe will likely need to purchase at least 100 additional shipments of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to make up for the significant drop in reserves caused by the cold winter and the halt in supplies from Russia, according to Reuters.
