Supply shortage or purchase surplus? Why EU Solves the “Urgency of Gas”

Energy ministers of EU countries held an emergency meeting on Tuesday local time to discuss how to limit the price of natural gas in the EU region and try to further promote the final energy plan when the winter is approaching. After a long series of debates, EU countries still have differences on this topic, and have to hold the fourth emergency meeting in November.
Since the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the supply of natural gas to Europe has been greatly reduced, resulting in the soaring local energy prices; Now it is less than a month from the cold winter. How to control prices while maintaining adequate supply has become the “urgent matter” of all countries. Josef Sikela, the Czech Minister of Energy, told reporters that EU energy ministers of various countries at this meeting expressed their support for dynamically limiting natural gas prices to limit the soaring energy prices.

The European Commission has not formally proposed a price ceiling. EU Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson said that it would be up to EU countries to decide whether to promote this idea. In the next meeting, the main topic of the EU energy ministers is to formulate the EU rules for joint natural gas procurement.

However, European natural gas prices fell repeatedly this week, even falling below 100 euros per megawatt hour for the first time since the Russian Ukrainian conflict. In fact, dozens of giant ships filled with liquefied natural gas (LNG) are hovering near the European coast, waiting to dock for unloading. Fraser Carson, a research analyst at Wood Mackenzie, a world-renowned energy consulting firm, said that there are 268 LNG ships sailing at sea, 51 of which are near Europe.
In fact, since this summer, European countries have started a natural gas procurement frenzy. The original plan of the European Union was to fill up the natural gas repository by at least 80% before November 1. Now this goal has been achieved earlier than expected. The latest data shows that the total storage capacity has even reached about 95%.