Europe’s gas transmission operators have warned that the European Union could fall 12 to 15 per cent short of demand this winter if a severe cold snap arrives alongside a failure on one of the bloc’s main import routes.
The figure appears in the winter supply outlook published on October 8 by ENTSOG, the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas. Both of the scenarios it modelled assume no Russian pipeline gas reaches the bloc at all.
It is the bleakest seasonal assessment the operators have produced since the Russian pipeline cut-off, and it rests on a storage position that is thinner than at any equivalent point in recent years.
Gas in European storage stood at 72 per cent of capacity on October 1, against 83 per cent on the same date in 2025. The European Commission has already allowed member states to aim for 75 to 80 per cent by November 1 rather than the 90 per cent written into EU storage rules.
Even in an average winter, ENTSOG found, a tight global market for liquefied natural gas (LNG) could leave stocks at 13 per cent by March 2027 — close to the technical floor at which some sites stop delivering at useful pressure.
The Dutch TTF benchmark, the reference price for most of the continent, traded at about €80 per megawatt-hour on October 8. It was near €72 at the end of September and sat some €40 lower before the United States and Israel struck Iran on February 28.
Torgrim Reitan, chief financial officer of the Norwegian producer Equinor, said in August that he did not expect Europe to reach 80 per cent storage before the cold set in. The operators’ figures suggest he was broadly right.
The reason lies in the Gulf. Iran has kept the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed since the opening weeks of the war, and roughly one-fifth of the world’s LNG trade used to pass through it.
Iranian drones hit the Ras Laffan complex in Qatar on March 18, taking out about 17 per cent of Qatari liquefaction capacity. Repairs have been estimated at three to five years.
Only around 8 per cent of EU gas comes directly from Qatar, with Italy the most exposed member state. The damage matters less for those contracts than for the global market: Asian buyers starved of Gulf cargoes are bidding for the same American shipments Europe needs, and the United States is now the bloc’s largest LNG supplier.
The shortfall ENTSOG describes is not spread evenly. Western Europe has new coastal LNG terminals and Norwegian pipeline supply; central, eastern and southeastern member states have neither, and the pipes that would move gas from west to east are not always big enough.
The operators put possible localised shortfalls in southeastern Europe at up to 12 per cent on peak demand days. Their harder scenario pairs a disruption to Europipe 2, the largest offshore line serving the continent, with a complete halt to Algerian imports.
That is where the politics starts. As reserves fall, national governments come under pressure to serve their own consumers before their neighbours, and the Commission has asked capitals to share any curtailment equally — a commitment that was easier to make in 2022 than it may prove to keep.
A second squeeze arrives midway through the season. Under the regulation phasing out Russian energy, long-term contracts for Russian LNG must end on January 1, 2027, with spot purchases and short-term deals already banned. Russia supplied close to 14 per cent of the EU’s record LNG imports in 2025.
The Council approved that phase-out with 24 states in favour. Hungary and Slovakia, both landlocked and both still drawing Russian gas under the exemptions that survived the negotiation, voted against, and Bulgaria abstained.
Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen ruled out any softening of energy sanctions against Russia when he addressed the price surge on April 21, noting that the bloc had cut its Russian gas dependence from about 45 per cent to roughly 10 per cent.
Jørgensen wrote to EU capitals on September 27 urging them to support storage injections and to hold down gas and electricity use. He described the situation as “a price crisis linking to a supply crisis”, and said there was no immediate threat to security of supply.
The measures he listed were familiar: lower temperatures in public buildings, limits on outdoor heating, public lighting switched off at night, tariffs that shift consumption away from peak hours. All of them are voluntary, and his letter conceded that nothing had improved since his first warning in March.
Industry is where the adjustment is most likely to land. Energy-intensive manufacturers buying at spot prices near €80 have shown in previous winters that they will cut output rather than pay, which is the quiet mechanism by which Europe balances its gas market without ever declaring an emergency.
