31JUL

Four LNG terminals at lowest utilisation since 2023

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09:44UTC

IEEFA identified four EU LNG terminals recording their lowest utilisation since 2023 in Q1 2026: Panigaglia (Italy), EemsEnergy (Netherlands), Fos Cavaou (France) and Sines (Portugal).

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Key takeaway

LNG cargo concentration at fewer hubs leaves four terminals underutilised and deepens the locational supply imbalance across the EU.

IEEFA data for Q1 2026 found four LNG terminals at their lowest utilisation since 2023: Panigaglia near La Spezia, EemsEnergy at Eemshaven in the Netherlands, Fos Cavaou in southern France, and the Sines terminal on Portugal's Atlantic coast. The finding sits alongside the Russian LNG quarterly record reported in the same dataset, which means overall import volumes rose while terminal throughput concentrated at fewer facilities.

The concentration pattern has a geographic logic. Post-Hormuz, LNG cargoes are overwhelmingly Atlantic-sourced (US at 63% of EU imports in Q1). Atlantic cargoes route preferentially to large-capacity terminals on the Atlantic and North Sea coasts: Zeebrugge, Gate Rotterdam, Montoir. Smaller or Mediterranean-facing terminals that historically received Qatari or spot Middle Eastern cargoes are losing throughput because those cargoes no longer exist in sufficient volume. The terminals recording low utilisation are precisely the ones most exposed to the loss of eastern and southern supply routes .

For infrastructure operators, low utilisation feeds directly into the revenue assumptions underpinning terminal investment cases. For gas consumers served by those terminals, lower throughput means less local supply, which reinforces the hub premium that ACER identified in Central European markets. The EU built LNG import capacity to diversify away from pipeline dependency; in practice, the new dependency concentrates at a handful of hubs.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Europe has built many specialised ports and facilities to receive tankers carrying supercooled liquid natural gas, which is then warmed up and pumped into pipelines. Four of these facilities in Italy, the Netherlands, France, and Portugal are currently running at their lowest levels since 2023, even as Russia has been shipping more gas to Europe than ever. This suggests that the gas arrivals are going to a small number of favoured ports rather than being spread across all available infrastructure, which creates a vulnerability if those preferred ports become unavailable.

What could happen next?

Consequence
The four underutilised terminals represent latent regasification capacity that becomes immediately available for replacement LNG procurement after the 1 January 2027 Russian cargo ban, but commercial reactivation costs (maintenance, reactivation fees) have not been publicly modelled.

Source Landscape

This story draws on centre-leaning sources from France

France

LeftRight

Consensus view: IEEFA and LNG market analysts at Kpler and Vortexa interpret low terminal utilisation alongside a Russian LNG quarterly record as evidence of cargo concentration: Zeebrugge and Montoir (the principal Russian LNG entry points) are absorbing a disproportionate share of Q1 inbound volume while southern and eastern European terminals sit idle.

This pattern is consistent with front-loading at the terminals best positioned to receive Yamal and Arctic LNG cargoes before the 25 April short-term ban.

Counter-view: Terminal operators and GIIGNL argue that low utilisation at Panigaglia, EemsEnergy, Fos Cavaou, and Sines reflects structural market-share loss to pipeline gas injections and renewables-driven demand destruction, not cargo concentration. On their framing, the same low-utilisation pattern would have emerged regardless of Russian LNG volumes.

Key tension: Whether the four underutilised terminals represent available reserve capacity for the 1 January 2027 replacement procurement, or whether structural demand destruction has permanently reduced their commercial viability irrespective of supply source.

First Reported In

Update #13 · Storage on track by 45 GWh; one outage away

Euronews· 29 May 2026

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Causes and effects

This Event

Four LNG terminals at lowest utilisation since 2023

Low utilisation alongside a Russian LNG quarterly record implies cargoes are concentrating at fewer hubs rather than distributing across the terminal estate, deepening the locational basis problem for Central European consumers.

Led to

Russian LNG hits quarterly record; double cliff looms

Four LNG terminals at lowest utilisation since 2023 alongside a Russian LNG record implies cargo concentration at fewer hubs rather than distributed terminal throughput.

Occurred 27 May 2026

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Different Perspectives

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.

European Commission

Brussels holds the bloc to 90% on a flexible window while Germany, holding roughly a quarter of EU storage capacity, tracks toward missing its own lower 80% figure by 21 points. A national shortfall this size in the anchor market matters more to bloc security than the flexible timetable alone can absorb.

French power exporters and CRE

French day-ahead rose in step with Germany but by less, reopening a EUR 7-17 premium that makes northward export flows commercially attractive again after the EUR 43.09 discount evaporated in days. CRE separately authorised RTE and Enedis to buy flexibility locally, betting the coming winter's binding constraint is grid congestion rather than a shortage of firm capacity.

TTF trading desk

A visible national shortfall like Germany's 21-point gap is a directional signal, not noise, for a desk holding the summer-winter spread. TTF's flat EUR 58-60 range through this week's German price swings says the market has not yet chosen to reprice refill risk into the front of the curve.

German cavern and CCGT operators

German caverns kept buying prompt gas at TTF near EUR 58-60 through the inversion; the wind collapse to 2.4 GW then flipped the spark spread to plus EUR 29 and put turbines back in the same queue. Every day turbines win that bid, injection at a third of the 877 GWh/day pace needed falls further behind.

Slovakia

Slovakia says it dropped its hold-out on the 21st sanctions package only after Ursula von der Leyen personally signed written gas-price and supply guarantees. The Council of the European Union's own 17,238-character release on the package names neither Slovakia nor any guarantee, leaving Bratislava's account unconfirmed by the institutional record.