Reden

Reden is Germany's largest natural gas storage facility, a salt-cavern site in Lower Saxony operated under the Astora/Gazprom Germany infrastructure before its transfer into federal trusteeship in 2022. By mid-April 2026 only 21 Mmcm had been booked at Reden for the coming injection season, roughly one-two-hundredth of the site's total cavern capacity, a figure that prompted VNG AG to call publicly for government intervention in storage refill economics.

Reden's cavern storage system can hold several billion cubic metres of gas and is one of the backbone strategic reserves underpinning German winter supply security. The site gained particular political visibility in autumn 2021 and 2022 when it was found to be deliberately run down by Gazprom Germania ahead of the Russian gas cutoff, a discovery that accelerated Germany's decision to seize the asset. It now operates under a trustee arrangement managed by the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur).

With the EU-mandated 90% storage fill target for winter 2026 requiring a substantial injection campaign, Reden's near-zero booking level in April signals that commercial operators find the summer/winter price spread insufficient to justify injection costs. The German government faces pressure to underwrite storage incentives or risk entering winter 2026 with critically low reserves, particularly given compounding supply reductions from the Hammerfest LNG maintenance and the ongoing Hormuz disruption.