Article · Energy · Money and markets · Lithuania
Will Europe's gas storage fill up in time?
The answer depends on which date you treat as the deadline. The target is 90 percent, and the rule allows it to be met at any point between 1 October and 1 December. Against 1 December the current filling pace is almost exactly enough. Against 1 November it would have to be half as fast again, and against 1 October, which the rule does not treat as a deadline, nearly four times faster.
Corrected on 10 September. The first version of this piece measured against 83 percent and against 1 October. Both figures are wrong. The target in force is 90 percent, and 1 October is not a deadline but the day from which the target starts to count. With the right figures the answer changes too, so the correction stands inside the text rather than replacing it quietly: what the first version said is written here.
The question has been open in the Stakyco letters since 4 September. There is still no final answer, because it only arrives in the autumn. But enough figures have appeared since then to say which way it is going, and that part is arithmetic rather than opinion.