At the opening of trading on October 10 the cost of gas in Europe collapsed by 7 percent - prices fell below $1,500 per thousand cubic meters for the first time since late June. This is evidenced by data from the ICE.

The TTF futures contracts were worth $1,473.6 at the lowest point. Subsequently, prices went up slightly - at the time of writing the price was $1,508 per thousand cubic meters.

Prices started to decline sharply last week amid Europe's success in pumping gas into its underground storage facilities (UGS) for the winter. At the beginning of the month, the countries filled more than 90 percent of their storage facilities, well ahead of schedule. By the end of the gas day on October 5, 97 billion cubic meters (90.12 percent) of natural gas was in European underground storage facilities with a maximum capacity of 107.7 billion cubic meters.

At that, the states have already started to take fuel from the storage facilities and at the end of October 8 their UGS facilities were 88 percent full, according to the data of GIE. European countries have accumulated enough natural gas to survive the coming winter without much trouble, Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said in early October. He predicts that problems may arise only in February or March, when storage facilities need to be filled. However, he did not rule out additional political or technical surprises.