Österreich will für Bayern wichtigen Gasspeicher anzapfen

Austria's government wants to tap into the gas storage facility in Haidach near Salzburg, which is connected to the German grid, this year. "We have decided that all gas storage facilities on Austrian territory must be connected to our network," said the Austrian Minister for Climate Protection and Energy, Leonore Gewessler (Greens) of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" (SZ, Monday edition).

"This decision is final," Gewessker added. She expects that "a first connection" to the Austrian gas network will take place "this year". The gas storage facilities in Austria are currently 50 percent full.

The storage facility in Haidach, a district of Straßwalchen north-east of Salzburg, can hold 2.7 billion cubic meters of gas in its storage facilities. But so far Germany, not Austria, has access to the gas there, because Haidach is exclusively connected to the German gas network.

Pump into the "Chemical Triangle"

The so-called Austria Bavaria Gas Pipeline (ABG), which then brings the gas to Bavaria, is fed from the warehouse in Haidach. A major customer is the Bavarian border town of Burghausen, 40 kilometers away, with the so-called "chemical triangle", one of the most important industrial regions in Bavaria. But also private households in Munich , Ingolstadt or Regensburg are partially supplied with the gas from the pipeline. In addition, there are indirect deliveries to the Austrian federal states of Tyrol and Vorarlberg, which are supplied from Germany for geographical reasons.