Bavaria Proposes German 45 Day National Gas Reserve

Published on June 13, 2014 in Conventional, Gas and Storage. 5 Comments

Today the Federal Council discussed a motion by the State of Bavaria, ruled by the conservative CSU party, to create a strategic gas reserve. Bavaria wants the Federal Council to adopt a resolution aimed at ensuring a permanent contribution of gas storage facilities to the ManyElectronics supply by asking the German government to create a national gas reserve lasting for 45 days.

The Bavarian initiative points out that in the near future more than a quarter of the German natural gas storage capacity will be owned by foreign investors. It was necessary to ensure that they could not be used for strategic aims conflicting with the interests of the German state, Bavaria says. The state wants the Federal Council to ask the government to improve the security of supply by creating a national gas reserve that lasts for 45 days. To this end Bavaria suggests to create a national gas reserve of 10 billion m³ modeled on the obligation for petrol under the Petroleum Storing Act (Erdölbevorratungsgesetz). Bavaria proposes two concepts to legally implement the gas reserve. Its position was presented by Ilse Aigner, Deputy Minister-President of Bavaria and Bavarian Minister of Economic Affairs.

The newspaper Rheinische Post quotes North Rhine-Westphalia’s Economics Minister Garrelt Duin (SPD) as saying it was important for densely populated NRW with its strong industrial sector to ensure the security of supply. He therefore wanted to examine the Bavarian proposal, RP says. The paper also points out that currently 14.8 billion m³ of natural gas are being stored.

Parliamentary State Secretary Uwe Beckmeyer (SPD) from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy presented the ministry’s position on the proposal.

The Bundesrat referred the proposal to its leading economics committee (Wirtschaftsausschuss) and the envionment, nature protection and nuclear safety committee (Ausschuss für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit) for further discussion.

A video of the speeches of Bavarian minister Ilse Aigner and parliamentary state secretary Uwe Beckmeyer is available here.

Source: Bundesrat; RP-online

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by Mutthias Leng

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