17APR

EU gas storage at 29.55% on 13 April

2 min read

12:44UTC

Aggregate fill moved 0.63 percentage points in four days on AGSI+, on the pace the Commission's reduced November target requires.

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Key takeaway

The EU aggregate is on pace; Germany is the variable that decides whether it holds.

GIE AGSI+ recorded EU aggregate gas storage at 29.55% (334.35 TWh) on 13 April 2026, up from 28.92% on 9 April , a gain of 0.63 percentage points over four days ¹. The European Commission has cut the November 2026 mandatory target from the standing 90% to 80% , which still requires roughly 0.67 TWh of net injection per day sustained through to November.

The four-day window ran at approximately 1.8 TWh per day on aggregate, comfortably above the target pace. That headline hides the distribution. Germany was net-withdrawing on 13 April , dragging on the aggregate; the 1.8 TWh/day pace depends on faster injection across peripheral storage estates.

The operational consequence is that the 80% target holds only if Germany flips to sustained net injection inside the next five to seven gas days. Each day the anchor keeps drawing is a day the periphery must inject faster to cover, and the capacity asymmetries on the periphery mirror Germany's at smaller scale: pipelines fill only as fast as they fill. A continued draw late into April is the structural signal that the aggregate number cannot maintain the pace.

Bruegel's refill estimate sits on top of an assumption that all member states flip to net injection on similar calendars. That assumption is under test. The EU Council's cutoff on the 25th then removes around 1.5 bcm per month of potential Russian supply into the same refill window, which makes the aggregate line on AGSI+ the single clearest public indicator of whether the November target is still in reach.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

EU gas storage across all 27 member states combined stood at 29.55% on 13 April, slightly up from 28.92% four days earlier. The target the EU has set for 1 November 2026 is 80%, which was reduced from 90% because the original target looked unachievable given current supply conditions. Getting from 29.55% to 80% requires sustained injections of gas into underground storage throughout summer and autumn. The pace required is tighter than in most previous years because storage started the season at a much lower level. The headline EU number looks slightly better than Germany's national number (23.27%), because other countries like France and Spain are currently injecting faster. But if those countries slow down or Germany takes longer to flip from withdrawal to injection, the EU aggregate will miss target.

What could happen next?

Risk
If Germany remains in net withdrawal until late April, it will fall materially below its national injection trajectory required to contribute proportionally to the EU 80% target, leaving the EU aggregate dependent on southern European injection above their own seasonal norms.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Consensus view: Pöyry (now Afry) and Aurora Energy Research model the EU storage-to-80% trajectory as requiring 7.5-8 TWh per day net injection from 1 May through 31 October, sustained without interruption. Against a background of Germany net-withdrawing, QatarEnergy force majeure reducing contracted supply, and the Russian LNG ban removing 17 bcm from 25 April, the modelled trajectory requires Hormuz resumption to be substantially achieved by June at the latest.

Counter-view: ENTSO-G's April 2026 supply adequacy assessment is more sanguine: the 0.63 percentage point gain in four days (9-13 April) is tracking approximately 1.8 TWh per day net injection at the EU aggregate level, which if sustained reaches 80% by late October with margin. ENTSO-G notes that Mediterranean member states (Spain, France, Italy, Portugal) are injecting ahead of profile and partially offsetting Germany's withdrawal delay.

Key tension: Whether EU aggregate storage trajectory provides an adequate adequacy signal, or whether Germany-specific shortfall (at 23.27% versus EU aggregate 29.55%) creates a national-level supply emergency even if EU aggregate reaches 80%.

Sources:Gas Infrastructure Europe

Mentions:GIE AGSI+ →European Commission →France →Portugal →QatarEnergy →Italy →Qatar →Germany →Mediterranean →Bruegel →Russia →European Union →Russian LNG short-term contract ban →

First Reported In

Update #2 · TTF EUR 42 as Russian LNG ban enters range

Gas Infrastructure Europe· 15 Apr 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

EU gas storage hits 2018 low

EU storage reaching 29.55% on 13 April represents a 0.63pp gain from the 28.92% baseline recorded on 9 April.

Occurred 9 Apr 2026

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This Event

EU gas storage at 29.55% on 13 April

The headline number is on track, but it is being carried by the periphery while Germany draws.

Led to

ENTSOG: EU stocks at 28% entering injection season

EU aggregate storage at 29.55% on 13 April set the baseline against which the first-two-week injection rate of 1.9 bcm is measured.

Occurred 14 Apr 2026

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Different Perspectives

Cross-border power traders

The France-Germany day-ahead spread flipped from a EUR 17.20 German premium on 1 August to a EUR 4.15 French premium on 3 August, the same day French curtailment peaked. They cannot yet attribute the flip to curtailment alone, since a like-for-like overnight comparison shows French nuclear output rising while wind fell and demand returned on the weekday step.

EDF

River-cooling limits took 7.6 GW, 12 per cent of its fleet, offline on 3 August, the highest curtailment since the heatwave began, with an easing forecast to 4.3 GW on 4 August and 3 GW after. It manages the cut as a recurring seasonal constraint, expecting it to lift with river temperature, not repair.

Gasunie

TTF, the Dutch hub it operates, drifted to roughly EUR 55 to 58 per MWh across the window, staying inside its recent range through both the German spark reversal and the French curtailment. It reads a flat hub price as evidence that neither event this window carried enough weight to move the fuel leg on its own.

German gas-fired generators

Record German solar of 18,761 MW on 2 August pushed the clean spark spread to minus 18.48 EUR/MWh, a loss-making day, before it returned to plus 16.20 on 3 August. They now price dispatch against post-solar residual load rather than wind alone, since the sign flipped inside 48 hours on unchanged fuel and carbon costs.

European Commission (DG Energy)

Its implementing-measures register logged transposition notices from only Portugal and Slovakia against Wednesday's Article 94 deadline for Directive (EU) 2024/1788, with 25 states silent. It expects the register to fill only gradually, since filing routinely lags legislating and any infringement track against non-notifying states runs on a slower clock than the deadline itself.

Spain's LNG terminal operators

Spain's 9,145 GWh terminal inventory is the largest single stock in the EU LNG network, an option value that can reroute cargoes wherever the winter strip pays best rather than a cavern gas obligation tied to a fixed date. That flexibility matters more as Germany's cavern shortfall pushes more of the winter security question onto import infrastructure.