Amid growing international market uncertainty, the Left party has issued warnings regarding potential threats to gas supply next winter. Jörg Cezanne, the faction’s energy policy spokesman and a member of the “Rheinische Post”, strongly criticized the reliance on market faith, noting how completely disrupted global gas markets have become due to the wars involving Russia and the US. He cautioned that basing the secure supply for the economy and population on a mild winter or functioning LNG markets, given that storage reserves are only half-full, amounts to playing a high-stakes game.
In solution, Cezanne proposed that some of the gas storage capacity not already booked by private market players should be filled by the state-owned gas trader, SEFE. He stressed that while stocking the reservoirs might be expensive currently, allowing them to run empty and risking the energy supply for both citizens and industry would incur significantly higher costs later. This came as the European gas storage platform indicated that gas reserves in Germany were filled to 49.9 percent at the start of the week.
