Bruegel's Week 17 European Natural Gas Imports dataset, published Tuesday 28 April, put EU aggregate gas storage at 32% of capacity, up from 31.47% on 25 April1. The Brussels think tank's calculation puts the required injection pace to reach the 80% target by 1 November at roughly 0.25 percentage points per day. The post-ban week has tracked below that rate.
For the November target, the deficit compounds. At 0.25 pp/day, the bloc needs to add about 1.75 percentage points per week; the late-April rate has been adding closer to 1.2. The half-percentage-point weekly shortfall is small in any single week and hardens by mid-summer if the pace does not lift. Germany's season-high 745 GWh/day injection on 25 April helped move the aggregate from 31.47% toward 32%, but the bloc-wide pace remains below the trajectory. Two deterministic supply removals (the EU short-term ban on Russian LNG contracts and the Arc7 maintenance ban now stacked on it) are the supply-side context against which the daily injection rate has to perform.
Within the EU figure, the Netherlands sits at 8.95% as of 25 April, more than fifteen percentage points below any other major market. GTS, the Dutch gas TSO, published the 2026/2027 security-of-supply overview confirming the 115 TWh cold-year target and the EBN (Energie Beheer Nederland, the Dutch state energy holding) state-backstop mandate of up to 80 TWh, against 25 TWh the prior summer2. The bulk of that mandate runs through Bergermeer, the Netherlands' largest storage facility, which held only 15 TWh of its 46 TWh capacity at end-January 2026. GTS has confirmed Bergermeer, Grijpskerk and Norg as required strategic assets through 2031.
Bruegel separately flagged that European reverse gas flows to Ukraine "dropped sharply" in the same dataset, a directional signal absent from wire reporting. Through 2024-25, reverse flows had been a persistent feature of EU-Ukraine balancing under the trans-Balkan corridor and Slovak interconnector arrangements. A sharp drop in late April could reflect Ukraine's domestic injection priority taking over export commitments, or shippers preferring European storage over Ukrainian. The OIES has not yet weighed in. Against Bruegel's three-scenario refill model showing €26 billion of refill cost at €45/MWh TTF, the bill arithmetic holds. The volume arithmetic is the bind, and the GTS Q2-Q3 Bergermeer injection schedule against the 80 TWh EBN mandate is the next operational test.
