Strait of Hormuz Crisis and Russian Gas Phase-Out: Europe’s Perfect Energy Storm

EU gas imports from Russia Jumped in February and expected to increase further in March (with 6 charts)

One of the victims of the war in the Gulf and the Hormuz crisis is this report, which should have been published earlier this month.

The timing of the Hormuz crisis could hardly be worse for the EU: European natural gas storage levels had already plunged to around 30% of total capacity, the lowest seasonal point since 2022—due to unusually high withdrawal rates needed to meet robust winter heating demand. This precarious position leaves the bloc especially vulnerable amid the ongoing disruption to global LNG flows through the Strait, exacerbating supply risks and price pressures as the region heads into the injection season. At the end of February, storage was substantially below the five-year average, as shown in Figure 1.