European natural gas imports and storage reserves
Looks better than I thought! But of course they&#x27;ll burn through that storage fast if it&#x27;s a cold winter. The import graphs give me hope that they might be able to mostly plug the gap with LNG and maybe Algeria. Of course for LNG they&#x27;re competing with Asia, so even if they are able to avoid physically running out of gas, it&#x27;s probably going to get very expensive.<p>I think what this has really demonstrated is the danger of always taking the easy solution on energy generation. Germany seems like the best example. They decided they wanted to phase out coal. Fair enough, it&#x27;s by far the dirtiest hydrocarbon. Then they also decide they don&#x27;t want to use nuclear power. And they don&#x27;t want to frac for gas. And they don&#x27;t want to invest much in LNG terminals because ultimately they don&#x27;t want to burn gas either. But renewables aren&#x27;t anywhere near big enough to close the circle right now, so basically by saying no to everything else, they by default grew their dependence on Russian gas.<p>There are no perfect sources of energy (at least not yet), so countries have to make tough choices. Hopefully that is clearer to decision makers in Germany and elsewhere now; making the easy, uncontroversial choice every time can lead you into a big jam.