VNG AG, one of Germany's largest gas importers, publicly called on the federal government around 1 April 2026 to intervene in storage refill after concluding that injection had become uneconomical at prevailing spreads 1. Reden, Germany's largest gas storage site, had only 21 Mmcm booked for next season, approximately 1/200th of total site capacity 2. LNG deliveries to Germany had fallen from roughly 40 Mmcm/day in late March to 22 Mmcm/day in early April, a 45% reduction 3.
VNG AG is Germany's second-largest gas network operator and importer, based in Leipzig; its call for state intervention is the market reading itself as broken. Reden is the anchor estate of the German storage system and the single largest cavern in the country. A public utility asking a federal government to underwrite private refill economics is not a policy preference, it is the operator saying the mechanism no longer works. The gas storage levy, the main injection-incentive instrument, was abolished on 1 January 2026 with no replacement named. What remains is a spot-to-forward spread that has to fund injection without policy support, and the booking data confirms it does not.
The mechanics compound the politics. Germany was net-withdrawing 459 GWh on 13 April , four days into what should have been injection season. Withdrawal capacity across the German estate runs at roughly 7.0 TWh/day against 4.3 TWh/day of injection capacity, meaning the caverns empty faster than they fill even when the market is working. At current booking rates, the catch-up physics is punishing.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz's coalition signed off a EUR 1.6bn relief package on 13 April 4. The instruments are a 17-cent gasoline tax cut for two months and a EUR 1,000 tax-free employer bonus; the target is the petrol pump, not the cavern. Bruegel has explicitly warned against gas-price subsidies as the policy response, while VNG is asking for exactly that 5. The short-term ban arriving late in the month removes approximately 1.5 bcm per month of potential inbound with no replacement supply named, landing the policy fork inside the same week the storage question sits unresolved.
