{"id":840814,"date":"2026-03-21T14:18:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T14:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/840814\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T14:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T14:18:13","slug":"eu-urges-member-countries-to-ease-gas-demands-amid-iran-conflict-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/840814\/","title":{"rendered":"EU urges member countries to ease gas demands amid Iran conflict \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the letter, J\u00f8rgensen asked EU countries to lower their gas storage refilling targets to 80 percent, 10 percentage points below normal targets.<\/p>\n<p>He also suggested that countries could start storage injections early to avoid an &#8220;end-of-summer rush to refill storages,&#8221; which would put upward pressure on prices. He also suggested that governments extend the deadline to meet filling targets to as late as December, two months later than usual.<\/p>\n<p>He said countries can take these measures under the EU Gas Storage Regulation, which provides for flexibility in difficult market conditions.<\/p>\n<p>The EU requires member countries to maintain gas reserves at 90 percent of capacity by the winter \u2014 a measure brought in after Russia&#8217;s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But this year&#8217;s colder-than-average winter depleted those reserves to an average of under 30 percent as of March, the lowest since 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Anxiety has been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/eu-fear-panic-buy-gas-reserves-low-energy-war-iran\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">growing<\/a> in Brussels over whether the conflict in Iran, coupled with already low gas reserves, could spark a fight among countries over dwindling global energy supplies.<\/p>\n<p>J\u00f8rgensen said that the EU&#8217;s gas supplies remain &#8220;relatively protected&#8221; since the bloc only has &#8220;limited reliance&#8221; on gas imports from the region. But as a &#8220;net importer&#8221; of gas globally, &#8220;high and volatile global prices may also impact the EU gas storage injections,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the letter, J\u00f8rgensen asked EU countries to lower their gas storage refilling targets to 80 percent, 10&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[6178,38231,35,6643,25833,2000,299,5187,475,774,837,2441,5436,2661,2443,332,1201,657,49,231032],"class_list":["post-840814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-conflict","tag-dan-jorgensen","tag-energy","tag-energy-prices","tag-energy-supply","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-imports","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-markets","tag-natural-gas","tag-oil","tag-regulation","tag-russia","tag-trade","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-war-in-iran"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116267601509553514","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}