There is a German gas storage facility in Austria, and it will soon be empty
The second largest gas storage facility in Central Europe is in Austria – and has nothing to do with Austria. The storage facility in Haidach, a district of Straßwalchen northeast of Salzburg, can hold a volume of 2.7 billion cubic meters of gas. But Germany has access to the gas there. Because Haidach is connected to the German gas network, not to the Austrian one.
This is causing problems now. Similar to the largest German gas storage facility in Rehden in Lower Saxony, two-thirds of Haidach is owned by the companies GSA and Astora, which are subsidiaries of the Russian state-owned company Gazprom. Although the German Gazprom company network is now in the trusteeship of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the damage has already been done.
Because, as in Rehden, the Russian regime had felt little urgency to replenish the storage capacities since last summer. The last third of the storage facility belongs to the Austrian group RAG Austria. However, he is only responsible for the technical operation of the deposit.
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From the gas storage facility in Haidach in the Bavarian chemical triangle
The result: According to the Association of European Gas Storage Operators, one of the two storage facilities in Haidach is quickly completely empty, while the other is only just under 17 percent full. And Germany has no means of replenishing the stores. The federal government has passed a law that prescribes minimum filling quantities for gas storage from this summer. But the law only applies to storage facilities on German soil.
Politicians in Bavaria in particular are now alarmed. Because the storage facility in Haidach feeds the so-called Austria Bavaria Gas Pipeline (ABG), which then brings the gas to Bavaria. A major customer is the Bavarian border town of Burghausen, 40 kilometers away, with the so-called “chemical triangle”, one of the most important industrial regions in Bavaria. The Haidach network point is “crucial for the uninterrupted supply of the site,” said a statement from Burghausen-based Wacker Chemie to the Federal Network Agency in 2019. But private households in Munich, Ingolstadt and Regensburg are also partially supplied with gas from the pipeline provided.
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fear of winter
The fact that a German gas storage facility is located on Austrian soil is due to a coincidence. A large gas deposit was discovered in Haidach in 1997. When the gas had finished producing ten years later, a German-Austrian consortium converted the gas field into the storage facility that nearby Bavaria was to believe. A few years later, most of the companies involved were taken over by Gazprom.
“The situation for the Haidach storage facility must be clarified in order to be able to use the potential for filling,” said Bavaria’s Economics Minister Hubert Aiwanger (free voters) of the “Passauer Neue Presse”. The capacities are “urgently needed for the coming winter”. Aiwanger’s demand: Austria should fill up the gas storage facility, which Bavaria then uses. After all, gas also flows from the Free State to Austria, emphasized the minister.
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Austria will help Bayern out
In fact, Bavaria and Austria maintain a trusting cooperation when it comes to gas supply. For geographical reasons, the two western Austrian states of Tyrol and Vorarlberg are even completely supplied with gas from Germany.
There are already first signs of accommodation from Vienna. Because the government of Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) is planning to build up a strategic gas reserve that is to be distributed across all storage facilities in the country – including Haidach. Michael Woltran, head of the responsible Austrian Gas Grid Management AG (AGGM), announced a few days ago that storage should begin on June 1st. Austria will become independent of Russian gas by 2027.