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Europe’s Winter Gas Gamble: Storage at Five-Year Low as Brussels Pushes More Sanctions on Russia

29 Lug 2026 Federico Galli

Storage levels are at a five-year low, Germany sits below 50 percent, and the Houthis have shut down Bab el-Mandeb while Hormuz operates under an American toll system. As shipping lanes close, the EU is preparing fresh sanctions on Lukoil. Italy, at 74 percent, is the exception that proves the problem.

Europe’s Winter Gas Gamble: Storage at Five-Year Low as Brussels Pushes More Sanctions on Russia

Riassunto dell'articolo

As of 28 July 2026, EU gas storage stands at 55.6% — a five-year low — with Germany at just 46.19% and Italy at 74.34%. European LNG imports have fallen to a 22-month low as both eastern maritime corridors are compromised: the Strait of Hormuz operates under a US-imposed toll system, and since 20 July the Houthis have enforced a naval blockade at Bab el-Mandeb, striking the Saudi tankers Encelia and Layla on 23 July. On 17 June, OFAC's General License 134C — the US waiver permitting Russian oil deliveries — expired without renewal, ending a policy Italian Deputy PM Matteo Salvini had cited in April as a model for the EU to follow. Brussels is responding with a new sanctions package targeting Lukoil and Patriarch Kirill, opposed by Bulgaria, while EU Regulation 2026/261 has banned Russian gas imports outright (LNG since 25 April, pipeline gas since 17 June). The analysis traces this shift back to the energy architecture built by Italy's ENI under Enrico Mattei and West Germany's Ostpolitik, arguing that abandoning overland routes just as maritime ones collapse leaves Europe dangerously exposed this winter — with Italy's diversification strategy standing out as the best-positioned exception.

Europe’s gas storage figures for the run-up to winter 2026-2027 tell a story nobody in Brussels — shorthand for the European Union’s institutional core, headquartered in the Belgian capital — wants to say out loud. Storage sits at 55.6 percent, the lowest level for this point in the season in five years. That’s 11 billion cubic metres short of where it stood a year ago. To hit the informal EU target of 90 percent by the October-December window, the bloc would need to inject 68 billion cubic metres net. At the current pace, the market isn’t delivering anything close.

The reason is straightforward: shipping routes, not demand, are the bottleneck. European imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) fell in early July to their lowest level in twenty-two months. The Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint through which a fifth of the world’s oil and LNG passes — now operates under what amounts to an American toll system, as this publication has previously reported. And since 20 July, the Bab el-Mandeb strait, the southern gateway to the Red Sea, has once again become a war zone. Europe is entering the decisive filling season with both of its eastern energy corridors compromised simultaneously. It’s against this backdrop that the EU is debating its twentieth sanctions package against Moscow.

Germany at 46 Percent: Europe’s Industrial Giant Risks a Cold Winter

Germany’s situation is the most alarming. As of 28 July, German storage stood at 46.19 percent, compared with 74.34 percent in Italy and a European average of 55.6 percent. On 1 July it was at just 41 percent — ten points below the previous year and the lowest level since 2022, the year of the original energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The cause is structural, not cyclical. Normally, the price gap between summer and winter gas — cheaper in summer, pricier in winter — incentivises traders to buy now and store for later. That spread has collapsed. With shipping lanes disrupted, it now makes more sense to sell gas immediately than to warehouse it. The market mechanism Berlin built its post-Russia energy security around has stopped working precisely when it was needed most.

Industry forecasts point to a possible 76 percent fill rate by November — adequate for a mild winter, but not for one as severe as 2010’s. Under that scenario, models project a shortfall of up to 9 terawatt-hours per month between February and March. Uniper, the German energy giant, has been warning for months that without an acceleration in imports, Germany risks outright shortages. Meanwhile, as Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government offers reassurances, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Germany’s main opposition party, is negotiating directly with Gazprom, Russia’s state gas monopoly, over reopening the Nord Stream pipeline — filling a political vacuum the government has left open, a story this publication has documented in detail (AfD Negotiates With Gazprom Over Nord Stream Reopening).

Bab el-Mandeb After Hormuz: Both Gateways Close at Once

On 20 July, Yemen’s Houthi rebels declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia. Three days later, they struck two Saudi oil tankers, the Encelia and the Layla, with ballistic missiles and drones in the Red Sea. At least nine vessels reversed course at Bab el-Mandeb, the strait through which 12 percent of global trade normally passes.

What’s new isn’t the attack itself — it’s the timing. A fifth of the world’s oil and LNG transits Hormuz, and since July ships have only been able to pass on terms set by Washington. Bab el-Mandeb feeds the Suez route, the corridor linking Europe to gas from Qatar and Asia. With both chokepoints in crisis simultaneously, every cubic metre bound for European LNG import terminals costs more, arrives later, or doesn’t arrive at all. For Italy, the stakes are well understood: nearly half of its imported LNG comes from Qatar, and the disruption at the Ras Laffan export terminal has already shown how costly that dependency can be.

Washington Closes the Window: The End of OFAC’s Sanctions Waivers

One date quietly certified this shift in the landscape: 17 June. That’s when General License 134C — the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) waiver that, since March, had allowed the completion of deliveries of Russian oil already loaded onto tankers — expired. Washington chose not to renew it. The whole sequence of temporary licenses, which began with a carve-out for India in March and continued through successive extensions, is now over.

In April, speaking from Milan’s Piazza Duomo, Matteo Salvini — Italy’s deputy prime minister and leader of the Lega party — pointed to those very licenses as proof that America was reopening trade with Russia and that Brussels should follow suit. This publication described that window at the time as narrow and non-structural. Events have proven the point: the United States used the waivers only as long as they helped keep prices in check during the Hormuz crisis, then shut them down once that need passed. The political lesson is clear. Washington treats sanctions as a flexible instrument serving its own interests. Brussels treats them as dogma serving its own orthodoxy.

Brussels Tightens the Screws as the Sea Lanes Close

The EU’s answer to this twin maritime crisis is, in fact, another round of sanctions. The package now under discussion targets Lukoil, the Russian oil major, and — pushed by the Baltic governments — even Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Bulgaria has already objected: its only refinery is Lukoil-owned, meaning sanctions would hit Sofia before they hit Moscow. The objection to sanctioning the Patriarch echoes one Hungary raised back in 2022.

Meanwhile, EU Regulation 2026/261 has made the ban on Russian gas legally binding — for LNG since 25 April, for pipeline gas since 17 June. The timing speaks for itself. The EU legislated away its overland option in the very same six-month period in which its maritime options were being disrupted by the Houthis and taxed by Washington. On 16 July, Salvini put the cost of sanctions to Italian businesses at €40 billion, noting that France and Spain have continued buying Russian gas without consequence — a remark this publication examined in detail at the time.

From Mattei to Ostpolitik: When Europe Negotiated as an Equal

It’s worth recalling how the energy architecture that 2022 demolished was actually built. It was ENI, Italy’s state-backed energy major, under Enrico Mattei in the late 1950s, that broke the Anglo-American oil cartel by negotiating directly with Moscow — Soviet crude in exchange for Italian technology. It was successive West German governments’ Ostpolitik, the Cold War-era policy of engagement with the Soviet bloc, that built the pipelines exchanging European pipe and capital for Siberian gas in the decades that followed. That network wasn’t a favour to Russia — it was an insurance policy for Europe: energy delivered overland, negotiated directly, immune to chokepoints, pirates, and other nations’ navies.

This isn’t nostalgia. It’s geography. The European continent borders the planet’s largest gas reserves via an overland route that no armed group can blockade. Severing that route entirely — without distinguishing between legitimate support for Ukraine’s defence and pure energy self-harm — has handed European supply security over to maritime routes Europe doesn’t control, patrolled by those who tax them or shut them down at will.

Geography Can’t Be Sanctioned: What Italy’s Numbers Teach Brussels

In this landscape, Italy stands out as the virtuous exception: 74.34 percent storage, the highest among Europe’s major gas consumers, the product of a diversification strategy built by the Italian government around Algerian supply, LNG import terminals, and strategic storage. It shows that a serious national energy policy can still deliver results even within unfavourable constraints. But it’s a short blanket: if Germany hits a crisis point in January, prices rise for everyone, and the EU’s single energy market will transmit the contagion even to the countries that did their homework.

The political question for this autumn boils down to one thing. If Washington adjusts its sanctions to fit price conditions, if France and Spain keep buying Russian gas without consequence, if Bulgaria defends its own refinery and the AfD negotiates with Gazprom — why should the EU face its most uncertain winter since 2022 by piling on new bans instead of reopening negotiations over supply? A Europe truly in command of itself would distinguish support for Kyiv from the unilateral surrender of its own energy security. Brussels, instead, is preparing for the cold by sanctioning. And come February, the bill will not land on Brussels’s desk — it will land on the households and businesses of Italy and the rest of the continent.