On Tuesday 9th September Minister of Industry and Commerce Jan Mládek visited natural gas reservoir in Háje near Příbram. This reservoir belongs to RWE company that owns 92 % of total natural gas storage capacity in the Czech republic. Minister was pleased to hear that the reservoir of natural gas are now at their full capacity. The capacity of RWE owned reservoirs is around 2.7 bn cubic meters. As representatives of RWE said the reservoirs are at their full capacity approximately one month earlier than usual. RWE chose to speed up its winter preparations as a reaction to the situation in Ukraine. The reserve of 2.7 bn cubic meters according to the RWE equals to approximately one third of Czech yearly consumption.

In its survey the team of university of Cologne (Germany) simulated the case where the Russia would stop its supply of natural gas to Europe. Some of the states such as Finland are completely dependent on Russian gas and as it has no reservoirs it could use in the event of Energy crisis it would feel the impact almost instantaneously. On the other hand the Czech Republic belongs to those countries that would even after 6 months forced to use almost no restrictions. In her interview on Sunday 14th September the director of Energy Regulation Department Alena Vitásková said that the legal framework dealing with the energy security needs to be renewed and made stricter as she wants the companies to have resources for the whole winter to be stored on the territory of the Czech Republic. She also spoke of the dispute between ERÚ and Net4gas about the costs of construction of the new pipeline Storch II and Moravia that would mean access to the newly built terminal for the liquefied natural gas in Poland. Net4Gas feels that it has no obligation to build another pipeline because it already used the customers’ money and invested to into domestic infrastructure.

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