General view at a compressor station of Dutch gas company Gasunie (REUTERS)

Dutch gas network operator Gasunie said on Wednesday that cold weather has caused an almost one-third increase in gas consumption in the Netherlands, causing the nation to tap from its underground storage facilities for gas (UGS).

"The gas consumption in the Netherlands has increased by 30% since the beginning of December," the operator said as quoted by the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad.

The Netherlands had almost 93% of its UGS filled by mid-October, but, according to Gasunie, the level fell by more than 10% in December.

The Dutch government said in October that it will spend $2.5 billion to offset the increase in gas and electricity prices. Additional funding for small and medium-sized firms totaled 3 billion euros. In addition, the cabinet set the final consumer price caps for gas and electricity at 1.45 euros for a cubic meter and 0.4 euros for a kilowatt-hour.

On December 9, Gas Infrastructure Europe (GIE) data showed that the onset of winter temperatures has caused Europe to increase gas pumping from its underground storage facilities (UGS), with the level of gas reserves falling below 90%.

European UGS are full by 89.93%, according to the statistics, after losing 0.47 percentage points in a day.

Europe was largely reliant on Russian gas and scrambled to increase its supplies before winter after exports from Russia were stopped following the start of the war in Ukraine.

According to IEA projections, Europe might run out of natural gas by the summer of 2023, which would be a significant portion of what the continent needs to refuel its gas storage system before the onset of winter.

It is also expected that getting gas for the upcoming winters will be harder for European nations now that they are mostly cut off from Russian supplies and there is increasing worldwide rivalry for limited supplies of liquefied natural gas.