Germany's SEFE unable to allocate gas storage space at Rehden in latest auction

Sept 9 (Reuters) - German gas company SEFE said on Tuesday it has not been able to allocate any of the offered natural gas storage space at its northern German Rehden facility for its 2025/2026 storage period in its latest auction.

SEFE had offered up to 3 terawatt hours (TWh) of capacity at its porous gas storage facility which is Germany's largest gas storage site, which it said represented the final opportunity to secure volumes required to meet a 45% filling target by November.

Germany is the European Union's biggest natural gas consumer.

Germany's gas storage filling targets were lowered earlier this year. Cavern storages have to be 80% full by November 1, while most porous storages, which are natural reservoirs in porous rock, have a 45% target.

Rehden is 26.91% full, compared with a German-wide storage fill of 74.08%, according to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE).

As a porous storage site, Rehden takes relatively longer to fill than cavern storage facilities, which represent the bulk of German storage sites.

SEFE has struggled to allocate Rehden capacity in several auctions over the past few weeks as economic incentives were not strong enough. Storing gas requires a discount at the time of filling to when the gas would be sold in the winter.

Interest in filling storage will be limited as the price difference between current gas prices and those expected in winter are not currently wide enough, Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, chief analyst at Global Risk Management said in a note this week.