Portugal’s gas reserves “at full capacity”

Portugal is the only country in the European Union to completely full gas reserves compared to the EU average of 69%.

“At the moment, underground storage is totally full,” said REN, Portugal’s energy networks company in response to the ECO/Green Capital on the state of the country’s gas reserves.

This level was achieved taking into account the “full compliance by suppliers with their obligations to build reserves”, as they are required to do so by European regulations and national legislation.

Also according to REN, the average filling of underground storage since 2020 was 90.7%. And the outlook for this year is equally positive: “The expectation is that in 2025 there will continue to be a high average level of filling, possibly above 90%”.

REN points out that this optimistic estimate “takes into account that no significant contextual changes are expected for how the gas market in the Iberian Peninsula operates”.

Consulting data from Gas Infrastructure Europe, the association for gas infrastructure operators in the European Union, it appears that, on January 6, the European bloc had an average storage level of 69.32%.

Portugal is the only country in the EU with storage levels in the order of 100%. Spain and Sweden follow, with levels of around 80%. The lowest storage cases are in the Netherlands (53.51%), Croatia (54.45%) and France (56.38%).