The headline
GIE's AGSI+ transparency feed puts the working-gas inventory across the 18 reporting EU countries at an unweighted average of 37.9% of working volume.
Country spread
The dispersion matters more than the mean. Portugal (90%) and Spain (68%) sit at the top of the table. The Netherlands (13%), Sweden (10%) and Bulgaria (23%) sit at the bottom. Germany — the storage anchor that Brussels has used as the reference site for the 80% November filling target — is at 28.9%, the lowest pre-summer reading since 2022.
Why it matters
The refilling window is the May-September stretch when warm weather and weak demand let operators inject. A 38% starting point means roughly 40 percentage points of injection are needed to hit 80% by November. That is 8 pp/month, double the historical seasonal pace. With Dutch TTF at €48.68/MWh, the price signal to fill is there — but the LNG slack is contested with Asian summer cooling demand.
What we're watching
- TTF spread vs JKM (Asian LNG) — narrows means EU loses the bidding war
- Norwegian pipeline maintenance schedule — concentrated June–August
- US Henry Hub — currently $3.02/MMBtu, the floor under US LNG export economics
Sources: GIE AGSI+, Yahoo Finance (TTF=F, NG=F).