According to data from the operator Gas Storage Poland, as of November 2, all Underground Gas Storage (UGS) facilities in Poland are full. Gas reserves amounted to 37326.5 GWh, which is 100% of Poland's total storage capacity. Moreover, over the last 24 hours, 20.3 GWh of gas was injected into Polish storage facilities. Gas pumped out of storage facilities per day amounted to 8.9 GWh.
Poland has three underground gas storage facilities: Sanok, Wierzchowice and Kawerna. However, their total capacity sums up to only 18% of domestic annual demand. According to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe, Polish storage facilities are among the smallest in the EU in relation to national needs. Only Croatia (16.5%), Spain (9%) and Belgium (5.4%) have lower reserving capability seen by the prism of satisfying annual demand with the most gas they can store at once.
At the other end of this ranking is Latvia, whose warehouses already have enough gas to cover 232% of the country's annual demand. However, it should be added that the Latvian storage facility is the largest in the Baltic countries, and neighbouring Estonia and Lithuania also store their gas there. There is also some gas security in Austria, where gas reserves are sufficient for 107% of national annual demand. In the case of Germany, full UGS is capable of satisfying almost 30% of regular yearly demand. Hungary, which imports all its gas from Russia, still has 2% free space - and its full UGS secures 65% of annual gas needs of the country.
While there is no place to store gas in EU countries, companies are increasingly using the largest UGS in Europe - the Ukrainian one. With a capacity of 30 billion cubic metres, they are already 40% full. In the face of Russian energy-based threats towards Europe, Ukraine made 10 billion cubic metres of its capacity available to the European Union.
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Source: rp.pl