Europe enters winter with empty gas storage and a price of $1,200 per thousand cubic meters

By late October 2026, the European gas market had reached a state that a year earlier would have looked like a scenario from a risk-management textbook. The price at the Dutch TTF hub broke the 100-euro mark per megawatt-hour for the first time since December 2022, and by 30 October the calculated cost of a thousand cubic meters had topped $1,200.

Storage filling stood at around 75 percent by the end of the month — the lowest level for that date in 15 years and almost 15 percentage points below the five-year average. Gazprom head Alexei Miller, commenting on the situation in the company's Telegram channel, conceded that in a cold winter peak values could reach $2,500 per thousand cubic meters.

The World Bank, in its commodity markets forecast published on October 30, warned that the EU's planned ban on imports of Russian LNG from January 2027 and on most pipeline gas from the end of that same year creates an additional risk for an already strained market.

This story differs fundamentally from previous gas crises. In 2022 Europe faced a supply shock but retained room for maneuver: it could ramp up LNG purchases and negotiate with alternative suppliers. By the autumn of 2026 the maneuver is over. Three factors — the Middle East conflict, the Norwegian outages, and Europe's own course toward a break with Russia — have combined into a structure in which each element reinforces the others. The American attacks on Iran and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz have put Qatar out of the game; before the war it accounted for around 20 percent of global LNG supply. European importers found themselves in direct competition with Asia for the remaining volumes: according to Reuters, spot quotations in North Asia had risen to $29 per million British thermal units by October 16 — a maximum since December 2023. In parallel, Norway, Europe's second most important supplier after Russia, has run into unplanned disruptions: according to OilPrice.com, drawing on information from the operator Gassco, production at the Ormen Lange field has fallen by roughly 40 percent — by 8.9 million cubic meters per day out of a total capacity of 22.9 million — owing to the failure of a compressor station, with the outage to last until February 2027. According to reports by Reuters and Bloomberg, at the Oseberg field the initial estimate of a reduction in supplies of 7.7 million cubic meters per day was revised upward — to 12.7 million. As a result, Europe enters the heating season with minimal reserves and maximum dependence on LNG, for which it must compete with Asian buyers.

Against this backdrop, the key structural risk lies not in the current conjuncture but in the calendar. In January 2026 the EU Council approved a phased rejection of Russian gas: a full ban on LNG imports from 1 January 2027 and on most pipeline supplies from September 30, 2027. In the first half of 2026, Russian gas accounted for around eleven percent of supplies to the EU, and it is precisely these volumes that must be replaced under conditions in which alternative sources are either blocked or already contracted by Asia. Formally the regulation leaves exceptions — a transition period for long-term contracts, a deferral for landlocked countries such as Hungary and Slovakia, the right of companies to invoke force majeure — but all of them are technical and temporary in nature and do not change the vector: the ban remains a ban. The World Bank states outright: difficulties in securing replacement volumes may intensify competition for LNG and push prices above the baseline forecast. The forecast itself, meanwhile, looks a paradox: a price rise of around 60 percent in 2026, a decline of eight percent in 2027, and almost 30 percent in 2028 — but the last two figures are achievable only on condition that the market receives new volumes and survives the coming winter without excesses. For now, the market is moving in the opposite direction.

For Russia this configuration creates an ambivalent position. On the one hand, Gazprom retains contractual obligations to those European buyers who have not yet exited Russian volumes, and in conditions of deficit these supplies acquire additional value. On the other, Brussels' political course leaves no illusions: even at a price of $1,200 and low storage levels in the EU's underground facilities, it does not revise the decision on the ban but merely notes the risks. This means that Moscow cannot count on restoring its former share of the European market in the foreseeable future, and the question is not whether Europe will return to Russian gas, but how painful the parting will prove for Europe itself. Arctic projects and the Northern Sea Route in this logic become for Russia not an alternative to Europe but a highway — ever broader and better equipped — along which Russian gas travels to where it is awaited.

While Brussels discusses the dates of bans, Moscow is not diversifying routes but simply continuing to focus on other markets. Russia long ago stopped clinging to the European market: if counter-interest arises there, the matter can be discussed. But the initiative in this dialogue is no longer on Moscow's side — and this is a fundamentally different position from the one in which it is sometimes sought to be presented in the West, portraying Russia as a supplier that holds Europe by the gas pipe and awaits its capitulation.

The main conclusion from the present situation: the European gas crisis has ceased to be a price crisis and has become structural. A price of 100 euros per megawatt-hour is not the peak of panic but a new plateau, which will evidently persist until the causes are eliminated: dependence on an unstable Middle East, problems at Norwegian fields, the absence of sufficient LNG receiving capacity, and — above all — the political decision to sever ties with the largest and most predictable supplier. No light is visible at the end of the tunnel, and therefore Alexei Miller's forecast of $2,500 remains not intimidating rhetoric but a realistic assessment of tail risk. And the question for the future shifts from "when will Europe lift the ban" to "how many more winters it will be able to get through with storage filled to three-quarters and a price that makes industry uncompetitive."