Even if Europe fills up its gas reservoirs, it's still likely to have harsh winters, the CEO of Russia's state-owned gas company said.
"It will be unusually cold for five to a week this winter," Bloomberg CEO Alexei Miller Gazprom said at Russian Energy Week in Moscow on the same day.
Miller said Gazprom had been supplying between 600 million and 1.7 billion cubic meters of gas per day to Europe when winter gas demand peaked.
However, as Russia cut off gas supplies over the past several months due to worsening relations with Europe, Europe's dependence on underground gas storage has increased significantly, Miller explains.
Europe's underground gas storage stockpile is currently at 91%, but in a worst-case scenario, it will drop to 5% in March next year, Miller predicts.
Miller observes that during the winter days when Europe's gas demand is at its peak, it could run out of gas by 800 million cubic meters per day, or one-third of Europe's total daily consumption.
"Europe will survive, but what will happen when we refill our warehouses ahead of the winter of 2023 and 2024," he warned.
(Photo=TAS, Yonhap News)