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Transcripción del abstract original del autor: The paper mainly deals with current developments in underground storage following liberalization in Germany, and particularly the progress made at VNG - Verbundnetz Gas Aktiengesellschaft. Although the European Commission has included gas storages in its concept of third-party access, a uniformly structured market has not yet emerged in Europe. This is due to differences in liberalization between individual EU countries, even though the targets to be reached by 2008 have been identified with relative clarity. Germany already meets these criteria and believes that TPA to gas installations should be governed by negotiated rather than regulated contracts. Further liberalization of the gas industry in Europe is taking place against the background of rising gas consumption and growing gas imports. In addition, there will be a gap from 2010 onwards between the demand for gas in Europe on the one hand, and domestic production and contracted imports on the other. These two factors arising from liberalization suggest an increase in storage, with new challenges facing underground gas storages (UGS).