Ships are circling off southwestern Spain as they wait to offload liquefied natural gas, and it shows the next complication in Europe's natural-gas crisis

• Ships are lingering in Spanish waters because they are unable to unload LNG, Kpler told Insider.
• LNG storage tanks in Spain are filling up fast. Spain has the largest LNG terminal network in Europe. 
• Europe has already imported more LNG so far in 2022 than in the whole of 2021.

Europe is importing large volumes of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, to stock up ahead of an expected harsh winter as Russia slows natural-gas imports to the continent. But complications over storage could thwart these efforts. 

A situation currently brewing in Spain highlights the continent's LNG — the supercooled version of natural gas that can be transported on ships over long distances — storage capacity problem.

Seven ships are currently lingering in the Bay of Cadiz located in the Southwestern Spain, as they wait to unload at the Huelva terminal, energy data provider Kpler told Insider.

Shipping data provider VesselsValue told Insider that one of the ships — an LNG tanker with the capacity to carry 174,000 billion cubic meters of fuel — has been waiting in the bay for about 33 days. 

Spain's national natural-gas grid operator Enagas said in a statement on Monday that there was a "mismatch" between expected demand and supply.

The statement — which was titled "declaration of exceptional operating situation" — said there were "very high levels of stocks" at all its LNG terminals and that this was expected to impact operations at least until the first week of November.

All the ships that have booked a slot to unload LNG will be able to do so, but there may be delays, a person familiar with the situation told Insider. 

The ships waiting in Spain are being hotly discussed in the energy circles, Viktor Katona, an energy analyst at Kpler said. 

That's because Spain has Europe's largest network for six LNG regasification terminals — facilities that turn the liquefied fuel back to gas — said Katona. If Spain is reaching its maximum capacity, so could the rest of Europe, even though there aren't so many ships hanging around in the major European LNG nations like the UK, France, and the Netherlands right now, he said.

Europe has already imported about 192 million cubic meters of LNG so far in 2022 — 25% more than it imported in the whole of 2021, according to Kpler data.

Enagas said in its Monday statement that the supply-demand mismatch "is not isolated from the Spanish gas system, but is repeated in other countries around us."

Enagas declined to comment on this story.