1st tender for the procurement of the strategic gas reserve

The first tender for the procurement of the strategic reserve was completed on 23 May 2022. The tender conditions were published on the AGGM website on 10 May 2022. Due to the great interest shown by market participants, the registration phase, which was originally scheduled to end on 16 May 2022, was extended by two days. After the end of the bidding phase on 23 May 2022, 12 noon, following the evaluation of 189 bids submitted in the three product categories via ASGM's web-based bidding platform, award decisions were sent to bidders just 6 hours later.

Target for the procurement of the strategic gas reserve already met to a good extent in the first tender despite the difficult market environment

In addition to the three storage companies OMV Gas Storage GmbH, RAG Energy Storage and Uniper Gas Storage (7fields), 25 Austrian and international companies participated. A total of 7.7 TWh of storage capacity was procured for the provision of strategic gas reserves. These will be filled from 1 June 2022 so that, in addition to the gas volumes held ready by the market, 7.7 TWh of gas will be available from 1 November 2022 to secure the gas supply in Austria.

Most of the storage capacities and gas volumes procured were obtained with "Product 1 - Gas in Storage". Of the gas volume offered in "Product Category 3 - Commodity Baseload", only about 50 % could be awarded. The corresponding offers for storage capacities were not sufficiently available, especially in the western storage facilities. This is likely to indicate that the gas companies that have storage capacities are planning to use them themselves.

In any case, storage capacities were secured to a sufficient extent to enable withdrawal in the direction of the German market area Trading Hub Europe (more than 1 TWh). The availability of the strategic gas reserve for the market areas Tyrol and Vorarlberg is therefore also guaranteed.

The average price for the procurement of the first tender of the strategic gas reserve including storage costs until 1 April 2023 is 124.50 EUR/MWh. A total of around EUR 1.05 billion including storage costs until 1 April 2025 was spent on these 7.7 TWh.

The first tender procedure for the procurement of the strategic gas reserve was carried out by ASGM Austrian Strategic Gas Storage Management GmbH in a market-based, transparent, non-discriminatory and public tender procedure with the following schedule.

The Tender Invitation with the key data for the tender can be found here:

Document Tender Invitation

The General Terms and Conditions (GTC) for the call for tenders including product descriptions and annexes are available for download here (all documents are available in English only).

Full Package of ASGM SGR tender documents

The registration of interested parties was handled via ASGM's web-based bidding platform. After successful verification of the pre-qualification criteria by ASGM, binding bids could be submitted by registered bidders on the bidding platform from 16.5.2022, 10 a.m. until 23.5.2022, 12 noon. The award decision was made by 24.5.2022, 12 noon.

The results of this tender can be found on the AGGM website.

Any questions regarding the procurement process for the strategic gas reserve can be sent to the following e-mail address: gasreserve@asgm.at.