Storage targets met in Germany, gas to be cheaper soon, says minister

EU to hold emergency energy talks on September 9, says minister

German Economy Minister Robert Habeck expects gas prices to fall soon as Germany is making progress on its storage targets and won't have to pay the high asking prices currently commanding the market, he said on Monday.

“As a result, the markets will calm and go down,” he said, adding that they had shot up recently due to high demand as well as market speculation, which could not be sustained long term.

Germany’s gas storage facilities are nearly 83 per cent full and will hit 85 per cent full in early September, Habeck said at an energy event in Hamburg. Germany has set a goal for gas storage levels to be 85 per cent filled by Oct 1 and 95 per cent filled by Nov 1.

Habeck also reiterated that Germany will not allow a Lehman Brothers-style collapse to happen to its gas market.

“I promise on behalf of the German government that we will always ensure liquidity for all energy companies, that we don’t have a Lehman Brothers effect on the market,” said Habeck, referring to the US investment bank’s collapse, which helped trigger the 2008 financial crisis.

Russia’s oil output has exceeded expectations in the wake of the war in Ukraine but Moscow will find it increasingly difficult to uphold production as Western sanctions begin to bite, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Monday.

“In the absence of (western) companies, in the absence of the technology providers, in the absence of service companies, it will be much harder for Russia to maintain the production,” IEA chief Fatih Birol told Reuters.

A team from the UN nuclear watchdog headed on Monday to Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the agency's chief said, as Russia and Ukraine traded accusations of shelling in its vicinity, fuelling fears of a radiation disaster.

Captured by Russian troops in March but run by Ukrainian staff, Zaporizhzhia has been a hotspot in a conflict that has settled into a war of attrition fought mainly in Ukraine’s east and south six months after Russia launched its invasion.

“We must protect the safety and security of Ukraine’s and Europe's biggest nuclear facility,” Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said in a post on Twitter.

A team of IAEA inspectors he is leading will reach the plant on the Dnipro river near front lines in southern Ukraine this week, Grossi said, without specifying the day of their arrival.

The IAEA tweeted separately that the mission would assess physical damage, evaluate the conditions in which staff are working at the plant and “determine functionality of safety & security systems”. It would also “perform urgent safeguards activities”, a reference to keeping track of nuclear material.

EU energy ministers will hold urgent talks on September 9, a Czech minister said on Monday, as prices spiral across Europe following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

“I am convening an extraordinary meeting of the Energy Council. We will meet in Brussels on the 9th September,” Czech Industry and Trade Minister Jozef Sikela said on Twitter.