MOSCOW, February 19. /TASS/. Gas reserves in Europe’s underground storage facilities (UGS) have dropped below 33%, already lower than at the end of the previous heating season, according to TASS calculations based on data from Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE).

Withdrawals from UGS on February 17 amounted to around 580 mln cubic meters. The cumulative volume of withdrawals since the beginning of the month ranks only seventh highest for February. The total volume of gas currently in storage stands at approximately 35.9 bln cubic meters. EU countries have exhausted the gas injected into storage last summer and have begun drawing on reserves remaining from previous years.

Temperatures in Europe this week are significantly lower than during the previous seven-day period. Warmer weather is expected to return to the region only by the weekend.

Wind generation accounted for an average of 19% of the EU’s electricity production in January and 21% in February. The average gas purchase price in Europe in February stands at $401 per 1,000 cubic meters, compared with $415 in January.

The previous gas withdrawal season from European underground storage facilities ended on March 28, 2025, when storage levels stood at 33.57%. Currently, Europe’s UGS facilities are 32.5% full (16.44 percentage points below the five-year average for this date), compared with 43.3% a year earlier. Since the start of the heating season on October 13, EU countries have withdrawn more than 61 bln cubic meters of gas from storage. Net withdrawals have nearly reached 56 bln cubic meters, already 1 bln cubic meters more than the volumes injected last summer. At the same time, total withdrawals on the 128th day since storage levels peaked exceed the five-year average for that date by 5%.

A lower storage fill level in the second half of February was observed only in 2022 (31.8%). That heating season ended in March, when around 25-26% of reserves remained in storage. The absolute minimum level of gas in Europe’s storage facilities was recorded in March 2018 at 17.7%.