Europe has forgotten about El Nino: gas reserves are low, and it may take a lot — EADaily, June 11th, 2026 — Politics, Russia

The global climate phenomenon El Nino can dramatically increase the demand for gas around the world. Because of this, not only will the competition between Between the EU and Asia, Europe may just need more fuel than last winter.

“The World Meteorological Organization has confirmed that it expects summer with El Nino, that is, with temperatures above normal in the Pacific Ocean — with a probability of 80-90%. There are signs that this year’s El Nino may be extremely strong,” said Andreas Schroeder, an expert at the ICIS analytical agency.

According to him, high temperatures in East Asia this summer may increase the demand for electricity for air conditioning. This will increase competition for spot LNG supplies and this will happen at a time when Europe needs to increase imports to replenish stocks.

China will increase LNG imports in the summer. Also and India has started active purchases.

“As a result, LNG supplies to Europe may face serious problems before the end of the third quarter,” the expert believes.

He predicts that the first quarter of the next may be colder and drier in Europe.

“In general, according to our estimates, winter gas demand in Western and Central Europe may increase by 6.7 billion cubic meters during the El Nino years,” ICIS noted.

At the same time, in Europe itself, the gap between current and last year’s stocks is still growing. In early June, it reached 9.3 billion cubic meters.

“If we keep the pace low in mid-April, by November the volume of EU storage facilities will be less than 80 billion cubic meters (73%), which is 20 billion cubic meters (18%) lower than in recent years,” said another analyst of the agency, Andreas Schroeder.

According to him, currently the market situation does not stimulate the injection of gas into storage facilities. Seasonal price spreads are deeply negative — winter gas quotes are lower than current ones.

Earlier, the consulting company Bernstein said that gas in Europe should rise in price by another 40%-50% so that the region could attract enough fuel and not lose competition with Asia, where the cost of gas has become higher than the European one. At the same time, fuel is still sold 50% more expensive than before the Iranian war, and three times more expensive than before the energy crisis of 2022.