Germany lags EU neighbours with gas storage refill as winter starts 

By Tristan Veyet and Christoph Steitz

Nov 3 (Reuters) - Germany, which holds more than a fifth of the European Union's gas storage capacity, has entered winter with its lowest gas stocks on record, far below the EU average, as the Iran conflict inflates prices and traders see little profit in stockpiling.

Low stocks and a four-year high in gas prices have stoked supply fears in Europe's biggest economy and beyond, with the memory of the 2022 energy crisis, when Moscow stopped a decade-long supply relationship with the continent, still fresh.

At the time, Berlin had to spend tens of billions of euros to buy gas from other sources and save its biggest gas importers, in a costly move to protect flats from turning cold and companies from switching off production lines.

As of November 2, Germany's gas storage levels stood at just 61.05%, according to Gas Infrastructure Europe, a far cry from the 74.56% EU average and also below a target of around 70% Germany set for the start of the month.

Over the past four years German gas storage levels, on average, came out 48 percentage points lower on April 1 compared with November 1, indicating how thin the margin is.

"Maybe we will exit the winter season with levels around 20 to 25%, not 30 to 40%," Raiffeisen analyst Aaron Alber told Reuters.

The Iran war and lower supplies of liquefied natural gas have pushed gas prices higher over the summer, when merchants usually find it more lucrative to store volumes than sell them.

Germany's economy ministry is currently also led by Katherina Reiche of the conservative CDU party, which has traditionally been less inclined to intervene in the market.

In September, the ministry said in a document for a parliament committee meeting that no government intervention was needed to raise German gas storage levels after a lobby group warned of shortages if the coming winter is extremely cold.

European countries which have large LNG contracts, lower industrial demand, smaller storage sites or stronger government intervention have managed better on storage refilling.

Poland for example has near-full storage levels, helped by infrastructure build-up and ample LNG contracting, though its storage capacity as a proportion of consumption is much lower than in neighbouring countries.

Polish storage facilities filled at 99% of capacity hold 3.3 billion cubic meters of the fuel, enough to cover only some 60 days of average demand, far below levels in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary.

Having learned the lessons from decades of dependence on Russia and the delivery cut-off in 2022, and with growing demand from power generation, Warsaw will this month open a new facility, boosting storage capacity by 25%, and plans further expansion.

Germany on Friday rejected accusations from Italy that it had failed to fill its gas stores ahead of winter in order to reduce costs for its gas import companies to prepare them for privatisation.

(Reporting by Tristan Veyet in Gdansk, Christoph Steitz in Frankfurt, Nina Chestney in London and Marek Strzelecki in Warsaw; Editing by Jan Harvey)