by Domenicantonio De Giorgio
Let's all be crystal-clear here.
The Second Natural Gas Crisis in just five years in Europe is entirely home-made.
The roots of the 2026-2027 crisis are not to be found in the slow replenishment of stocks.
Against all odds and utterly discouraging price conditions, stocks are being replenished.
If we look strictly at the absolute volume of gas added to storage across the European countries monitored by GIE-AGSI, we see that, as of August 18, 2026, a respectable total of 379TWh equivalents of Natural Gas (red line in the above chart) were added into storage. Certainly not the largest addition of the previous past five Refill Seasons but only a small whisker (47TWh) below the 5-year average refill of 426TWh (black-dashed line in the above chart) as of that date.
The elephant in the room is the recklessly low level of stocks the 2026 refill season was started, with EU-wide storage at 314TWh as of April 1, 2026.
This is not bad luck.
My December 31, 2025 article "Terra Incognita: The Fragility of the European Natural Gas Market (2025-2026)" was the most candid yet alarm of the thin-ice European Energy Security was put on.
Domenicantonio De Giorgio
This is an ill-conceived market architecture sponsored at the EU-level and implemented by years of group-thinking, green-ideology, hollow virtue-signalling and poor understanding of strategic vulnerabilities and geopolitical posture, a summary of which I made in the latest article published on Rivista Energia that you can find at the link below.
Domenicantonio De Giorgio
Over the months, I have very extensively called out how the German, Dutch reckless use of Natural Gas Stocks during the 2025-'26 Winter Season is the root-cause of this year's misery.
Germany - which used to be Europe's single-largest holder of Natural Gas Stocks at the start of the past winter seasons - ended Winter 2025-'26 with mere 54TWh left in storage, the second-lowest mark from Winter Season 2012-'13 after having depleted 134TWh of stored Natural Gas over the past winter season. The Netherlands, home of the Title-Transfer Facility (TTF), Europe's most important Natural Gas market, ended Winter 2025-'26 with only 7TWh left in storage after having depleted 99TWh of stored Natural Gas between November 2025 and March 2026.
By combining the absolute level of stocks depletion with the percentage of fullness of Natural Gas storage facilities by key European States as of April 1, 2026 - black - and April 1, 2025 - orange shown in the chart above one can appreciate how acutely grave the big picture was to begin with by the end of the last winter season.
The warning signs were evident enough long before the actual end of the past Winter season. The numbers shown in the two preceding charts above were scrutinized for Rivista Energia in mid-February 2026 already. They fell on deaf ears.
Domenicantonio De Giorgio
So again, don't call this bad luck.
It's not (only) geopolitics that have gone wild; it's not (only) the extreme, deadly heat that's struck Europe during Summer 2026.
It's the fabric itself of the whole architecture that is unstable from within.
Over the years I have devoted countless articles, scientific research, media interviews on Italian and International Networks (you can find here some of them) and commentaries on my social media channels to the many flaws and points of sugarcoated collective blind spots, to no avail.
"Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind" seems to the be most sarcastically accurate description of the Summer 2026 Energy Misery in Europe
After hitting the second-dearest monthly wholesale price of the last decade in June '26, July went repeating it back-to-back.
— Domenico De Giorgio, EU. Capre Diem (not a typo). (@degiorgiod) August 5, 2026
Wholesale Power Prices roared well past 100eur/MWh in Italy, Germany, and Spain (oh! Renewables!), where they logged a scary +51% MoM vs June 2026. /2 pic.twitter.com/scBXJGkjbb
and of what expects European Memeber States going into Winter 2026-'27.
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