EPG Postpones Cavern Completion at UGS Katharina

Erdgasspeicher Peissen GmbH (EPG) and its shareholder VNG Gasspeicher GmbH (VGS) today decided to suspend the further expansion of the Katharina underground gas storage facility near Peißen in Saxony-Anhalt for the time being.

The last of the twelve caverns will not be completed in 2025 as planned. The initial gas filling of cavern 153, originally planned for April to October 2025, will therefore be postponed by one year for the time being.

“This decision was not easy for us, but the current market situation has forced us to stop the expansion of the underground gas storage facility for the time being. However, this does not affect the operation of the eleven caverns of the underground gas storage facility that have already been completed,” says Holger Rummel, Managing Director of EPG.

The main reason for the decision is the fact that only 55% of EPG's storage capacity for the 2025/26 storage year has been marketed at the present time. “Due to the current market situation, it is also currently unclear whether these will be filled at all. If there is obviously no incentive to book and use further storage capacities at the moment and, moreover, the filling of the currently marketed storage capacities is not secured, there is simply no gas available for the initial gas filling of cavern 153,” says Rummel.

Under normal market conditions, EPG would market the cavern's capacity of 59 million m³ or 678 GWh as an initial gas filling product so that storage customers could inject the gas required for filling. The capacity would be available for flexible use by storage customers for the winter of 2025/26. “Another reason for suspending the storage expansion is the high price we would currently have to pay to procure the necessary cushion gas. Under the current economic conditions, this is not justifiable from a business perspective,” summarizes Rummel.