Munich - Russian gas monopoly Gazprom has begun talks with Germany on creating western Europe's biggest gas storage site in a bed of rock on the German coast of the Baltic Sea, a news magazine said Saturday.

Gazprom would be able to feed gas to the site through the planned Nord Stream pipeline under the sea which it is building in a joint venture with German gas companies. The past week's halt in supply via Ukraine has highlighted the issue.

While Germany has been largely unscathed, nations of south-eastern Europe have gone for days without a key fuel for heating.

The magazine Focus quoted the Economics Ministry in Berlin saying it had met with Gazprom executives in Berlin about the backup storage project, designed for 10 billion cubic metres of gas.

The gas would be forced into the pores of a bed of rock up to 700 metres deep near Hinrichshagen, close to the coast.

Gazprom's principal executive in Germany, Claus Bergschneider, was quoted saying that the Russian company was willing to put "a large proportion" of the gas in the backup storage site under the control of the German government.

Currently Germany has no emergency reserves of gas, though it does have a government-supervised back-up stock of sufficient oil to last 90 days. (dpa)