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Four LNG terminals at lowest utilisation since 2023

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10:53UTC

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

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.