Europe’s January Test: The Russian LNG Ban Meets the Hormuz Winter

The winter arithmetic is getting the attention. The more revealing test comes on 1 January, when a ban Europe designed to be irreversible takes effect in the middle of a gas crunch it did not plan for. Europe’s energy conversation this autumn is dominated by arithmetic. EU gas storage stands at roughly 70 per cent, about 12 points below the same point last year, and the Dutch TTF benchmark is trading around €72 per megawatt-hour, some €40 higher than before the United States and Israel struck Iran on 28 February. In Germany, which holds the continent’s largest storage capacity, sites…