Germany reaches October gas storage goal of 85% despite prolonged Nord Stream 1 halt – National | Globalnews.ca

Germany‘s gas storage facilities on Friday reached the October goal of 85% despite of the extended halt of the main pipeline delivering gas from Russia to Germany, industry data from European operators group GIE showed on Saturday.

The storage levels are already at 85.02%, suggesting that the companies and citizens in Europe’s biggest economy are heeding the government’s plea to save gas to get it through the winter in light of reduced Russian gas imports.

In July, the government unveiled new energy-saving measures and tightened its gas storage targets, fearing that persistently low Russian gas supplies could lead to winter shortages.

Industry gas consumption fell by 21% in July year-on-year, Germany’s BDI industry association head Siegfried Russwurm said last week but warned that the drop was not a good sign.

“The reason for this is often not efficiency gains, but a dramatic drop in production. That is not a success, but an expression of a massive problem,” Russwurm said.

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Germany’s new achieved storage goal came as Russia scrapped a deadline to resume flows via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, saying it had found faults during maintenance.

(Reporting by Riham Alkousaa; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)