Berlin, Düsseldorf. High gas prices and low inventories are causing tension shortly before the start of the heating season. Federal Minister of Economics Katherina Reiche (CDU) has obliged the state gas company Sefe to fill up the storage facilities. “But we are not over the winter yet,” said Sebastian Heinermann, managing director of the gas storage association INES, on Wednesday at the Handelsblatt gas conference in Berlin.
Energy expert Anne-Sophie Corbeau from the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University also sees the situation critically. “The possibility of a cold winter coupled with low gas storage levels and restricted LNG exports worldwide – that’s what makes the situation so dangerous,” she said.
If the situation with regard to the Middle East and exports across the Strait of Hormuz does not improve, the end of the year will see a decline in volumes in global LNG trade for the first time since 1981, the expert said.
In view of the critical situation, the state has reacted. Instead of leaving the filling of the German gas storage facilities exclusively to the market, Reiche officially instructed the state-owned gas trader Sefe late on Tuesday evening to fill the gas storage facilities, as the Handelsblatt exclusively reported.
The central reason for the step lies in the ongoing geopolitical risks, it was said in ministry circles. Sefe confirmed that it had received instructions to “procure and store eight terawatt hours of gas by December 15.” The total capacity of German gas storage is around 250 terawatt hours.
Sefe is the former subsidiary of the Russian company Gazprom, Gazprom Germania. It was nationalized by the federal government during the Ukraine War in order to secure gas supplies. The current company name “Sefe” stands for “Securing Energy for Europe”.
But the company has not yet kept the promise that the name makes. Although the Ministry of Economic Affairs unofficially ordered Sefe to procure gas for the winter weeks ago, daily storage in Germany has continued to fall since then.
According to the management consultancy Team Consult, 276 gigawatt hours per day were stored in Germany last week. The week before it was 578 gigawatt hours. Recently, only one percent of the possible amount was stored in Sefe's gas storage facility.
Sefe is both a gas storage operator and trader. The filling levels in the Sefe storage facilities not only depend on how much gas Sefe buys as a dealer, but also on how much other dealers buy.
Sefe sales director Hamead Ahrary said at the Handelsblatt conference: “It is important to us to do the whole thing in a way that is gentle on the market.” It is also important that other market participants also save. “Storage is the responsibility of the entire market,” said Ahrary. Economics ministry circles also said that despite the instruction to Sefe, the expectation remains that all other market players will fulfill their obligation to store gas for the winter “without any ifs or buts”.
On average, the German caverns are currently 57 percent full - the Sefe storage facilities are only 36 percent full. If Sefe were taken into account, Germany would long ago have a filling level of more than 70 percent and would therefore comply with the legal requirements. As a dealer, Sefe has “stored enough gas” for its customers, said Ahrary.
One thing is clear: the gas markets are tense like never before. The European gas price is currently around 70 euros per megawatt hour. Before the start of the Iran war it was around 30 euros. But since the USA attacked Iran and the Strait of Hormuz is only accessible to a limited extent, hardly any gas from Qatar reaches the world market. A quarter of the previous natural gas supply is missing globally.
The high prices have put Germany in an unusual situation: gas is usually more expensive in winter than in summer. This gives traders an incentive to store gas in the warm months and sell it again in the cold season. But in recent months it has looked more like it would be the other way around this year.
Since March, gas prices have been two to two and a half times higher than at the beginning of the year. At the same time, many companies and politicians expected for months that the Iran war would end before winter - and that prices would then fall. Storing it in the summer was therefore not worth it.
Economics Minister Reiche's motto in recent months has always been: let the markets do their thing. At the beginning of September she said during budget deliberations in the Bundestag: “The state must not itself become a price driver.”
The minister's concern: If the state were to purchase large amounts of natural gas to fill the storage facilities, the sharp increase in demand could lead to much higher gas prices on the market. This is exactly what happened in 2022 after the start of the Ukraine War, when the federal government ordered gas purchases to ensure gas supplies in the winter.
Nevertheless, the minister always emphasized that she would intervene if necessary, it was said in ministry circles. This need has now arisen. “Entrusting the Sefe with additional procurement is one of these prepared instruments,” it said.
However, the ministry has also stated that it will not go as far as 2022. Despite the instructions, Sefe retains room for maneuver. The company will decide for itself which quantities will be stored and when.
In November 2025, a study that the Ministry of Economic Affairs under Robert Habeck (Greens) commissioned from the consulting firm Frontier Economics confirmed that excessive state intervention may be the wrong approach. She came to the conclusion that government level requirements for gas storage actually caused the important gas price difference between summer and winter to shrink - and the markets then functioned even worse. The recommendation was therefore: “Permanent abolition of fill level specifications.”
The study authors also wrote: If the state wants to do something, then the most sensible thing to do is to create a strategic reserve - that is, to procure a clearly defined amount of gas and set it aside for crises.
Reiche then launched such a strategic reserve - although it will not be set up until the summer of 2027. The filling level specifications in Germany continue to state that the gas storage facilities should be 80 percent full by November 1st. But the reality is far away from this mark.
INES boss Heinermann made it clear in Berlin that there was a “need for structural reform”. "We now have to intervene in the market at short notice, we have to organize this better in the future. We have to put the whole thing on a healthy basis so that we don't have to take short-term measures in the future," he said in Berlin.
