Due to the serious gas consumption fluctuations in different seasons, gas storage facilities are necessary to secure a reliable gas supply. Currently gas storage capacity is very small in China, due to a lack of economic incentive for storage facility construction under the current pricing mechanism. In this study, the impacts of the operation mode and pricing mechanisms of possible gas storage facilities are analyzed based on game theory. It is suggested that the storage capacity can be increased through market reform in China. A game theoretic model is proposed in this study, which can be used to analyze the operation modes of natural gas storage quantitatively. The most similar current studies are based on qualitative analysis without supporting mathematic models. Our results show that by allowing third party involvement, the storage capacity of gas storage raises to 1.2 times of the original. Meanwhile, consumer surplus increases by 25%. Total social welfare grows by 9%. When the storage operates independently, the optimal capacity becomes 1.6 times of that of integrated operation and the total social welfare is raised by 44%. This means independent operation is most effective for the gas storage.