On August 1, a projectile stopped an LNG tanker in the Strait of Hormuz — a ship three football fields long, cargo chilled to −162°C, bound from Qatar. The cargo was gas, but the first market to jump was oil: the strait carries both. Every news channel is covering the strike and the war around it.

The quieter question: on the day a gas ship stops in that strait, what is Europe's written plan? It exists — and its core is one line: storage 90% full by November 1. Oil's plan, written in 1974, fills a book: how much to store, who opens the tanks, on what signal, in what order. The difference between "how much is stored" and "how it gets out" is the difference between a reserve and a number.

August 1: the tanker Gaslog Shanghai was hit by what its manager called an unknown projectile while passing the Strait of Hormuz — Bermuda flag, Greek management, a cargo loaded in Qatar. Engine room damaged, blackout, adrift; no casualties, no leak. The same day another tanker nearby reported an explosion close to its hull.

It is the second strike on Qatari gas in a month; after the first, Qatar suspended shipments through the strait for three weeks. About a fifth of the world's seaborne gas passes through this one strait, and roughly a tenth of Europe's LNG imports are exposed to it. We took the strait itself apart in EP.012 — today is about the receiving end: what waits at home.

In 1973, Arab producers embargoed the West; fuel queues wrapped around city blocks. The answer within a year was an institution: the International Energy Agency, and a binding agreement — every member holds oil stocks worth at least 90 days of the oil it buys in from abroad.

But the ninety days is only page one. The rest of the book makes it a reserve: a defined trigger (what counts as a supply emergency), a release procedure (who opens the tanks, in what order, at what pace), and coordination (members act together). The machine has been used for real — 1991, 2005, 2011, 2022; each time, for oil. Hold the definition: a reserve is a stock plus the rules for using it. The rules are the half that works at three in the morning during a crisis.

Gas got its crisis in 2022. Europe wrote a law — quickly: storage 90% full by November 1. As a target it is beautifully designed: one number, one date, publicly tracked, met every year since. But notice the base: oil's ninety counts days of imports; gas's ninety counts percent of the tanks. A full tank, by itself, tells you nothing about how many days it buys you.

Now look for the rest of the book. A trigger called "shortage" — not defined. A release order — hospitals, factories, or a neighbouring country in worse trouble first? — not written. And ownership: the gas mostly belongs to private traders; in a crisis it flows to whoever pays most. The state watches a gauge on a tank it does not own. The number-on-a-date also came with its own bill: in 2022 everyone raced to fill at once — TTF touched €340 per MWh against a decade average of €5–35, Europe spent €116 billion on LNG in a year, and ships contracted for poorer countries were diverted to the higher bidder. Their blackouts helped finance our percentage.

Europe saw these gaps. Three got patches. The bidding race got a joint-purchasing pilot: 90 billion cubic metres posted, 77 matched — and, of the short-term slice, about 1 reported as actually signed. Matchmaking is not buying; the pilot's successor is, in the law's own words, a permanent voluntary tool. The who-helps-whom problem got a solidarity rule, older than the 2022 crisis: forty agreements expected, nine exist.

The price spike was actually fixed, in 2025: the 90% became flexible — any time between October 1 and December 1, with deviations allowed in bad markets — so the filling race no longer detonates prices. Note what was amended: the peacetime chapter. The wartime chapter — trigger, release, ownership — still does not exist, and the law even allows tanks to be drawn down the day after the target is touched. Meanwhile the bidding war has changed sides: since late 2025, Asian buyers outbid European ones. The same contest that once worked for Europe now works against it.

Repair one — write the book. A strategic public slice of storage plus the missing pages written in advance: emergency definition, release order, coordination. The price: insurance stock buys high and sells low; public stock crowds out private; a written trigger is a map for speculators.

Repair two — pay factories to power down. Industry sells the state a peacetime-priced option on its own consumption; demand switches off in order instead of a price shock choosing victims. The price: paying for readiness rarely used; the state picks who is interruptible; the cut-me-first badge reads relocation brochures.

Repair three — one buyer, shared doors. Joint purchasing that becomes mandatory in a declared crisis, shared ports, solidarity with an automatic compensation formula. The price: solidarity untested by a real shortage; a single point of failure and lobbying; "mandatory in crisis" needs the crisis definition nobody has written.

Europe's tanks, to be fair, are filling on schedule; the number will be met, as every year — and that is genuinely worth something. But the question that separates a reserve from a number works on any strategic stockpile any government ever shows you — gas, grain, medicine, chips. Don't ask how much is stored. Ask for the rest of the book: who opens it, on what signal, in what order, and who owns what's inside.

If the answer is "the market will decide, on the day" — that is not a plan. It is a hope, with a deadline. Europe has fixed how it fills. It has never rehearsed the day it must draw the gas back out. And the last time those pages were missing, the market wrote the bill — at €340 per megawatt-hour.