With Record Stores Of Gas, Is The Energy Crisis Over? It's Complicated

Europe is leaving behind the winter months with gas storage facilities at all-time highs, allowing wholesale prices to tumble and home energy bills to drift down towards levels last seen before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

- Jillian Ambrose 

So is Europe's energy crisis over? Experts caution that falling bills belie a deeper economic hangover that could extend into the next decade.

Tomas Marzec-Manser, head of gas analytics at the data provider ICIS, said:. "I would say that we're managing the crisis. But the wider economic picture has become its own beast." Before the Ukraine invasion of February 2022, Russian pipelines were Europe's biggest source of imported gas. After the attack, imports plunged by two-thirds from their 2019 peak, forcing wholesale prices to almost 10 times the pre-crisis level.

Today there are clear signs that the gas supply crunch has begun to ease. Europe has emerged from its second winter without access to Russian supplies with gas stores at a record 59% full, according to the industry body Gas Infrastructure Europe, thanks to pipeline imports from Norway and seaborne gas from the US.