GERMANY'S GAS WINTER HOPE

REUTERS - Oct 20  - Germany's energy regulator chief Klaus Mueller described measures to offset Russian imports as "encouraging" in a note issued on Thursday on the status of the gas supply in Europe's largest economy.

"If we continue to meet our savings target of at least 20% in Germany, if three LNG terminals start operating at the beginning of next year at the latest, and if the expected winter-related decline in imports and the rise in currently low exports remain moderate, then we can get through the winter without a national gas emergency," he said in a statement.

Germany last showed a 96.5% filling level of its underground gas storage caverns, surpassing a Nov. 1 target of 95%.

This is the result of a raft of measures after it braced for its first winter without Russian gas in decades after exports from Russia to the West dwindled because of tension over the war in Ukraine. Germany's industry has been hit hard by the stop.

The government has intensified efforts to build up floating LNG terminal operations from scratch to receive supplies from overseas, and to import more gas from western and northern European neighbours through pipelines.

Mueller said the authority had considered four scenarios for the 2022/23 winter that factored in different import and export balance developments and various winter weather, among other factors.

Only in one of the four scenarios was there an as-yet-unqualified possibility of a gas emergency.

But the date of that eventuality has moved to the end of February whereas in August calculations, the Bundesnetzagentur had seen an emergency in November as a possibility.

Mueller again urged consumers to reduce gas consumption.

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