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Gas: actions to support market development and integration at the EU level

Milan, July 28, 2010

Italian version

The Authority's pursued objectives in its consultation document DCO 25/10 include wholesale natural gas market promotion and development through regulatory interventions for transmission, balancing, storage and distribution services in a coordinated way - intended to ensure system continuity. The document details the specific interventions to be implemented and will be available on the authority's website www.autorita.energia.it with the opportunity for stakeholders to make observations and suggestions until 24 September 2010.
The document's purpose is to identify the main regulatory aspects of natural gas transmission, balancing, storage and distribution services to be further developed and enhanced in order to sustain the natural gas market while bearing in mind the provisions of the "third energy package" and Community law 2009.

The prescribed interventions are also designed to favour the creation and development of a natural gas exchange and promote the Italian gas market integration in the European context and the interaction between the gas and electricity markets, which is essential to avoid distortions in the electricity market and the dispatching service market in particular.

The main regulatory interventions to favour market development include:

• the introduction of a balancing service based on market criteria and the necessary changes in the storage service;
• the introduction of a monitoring system for potential debit/credit positions of transport and balancing service users during the provision of such services and, therefore, their positions vis-à-vis the system; the identification of guarantees covering such positions and mechanisms limiting the debt exposure of operators towards the system;
• a change in the scheduling of injection and withdrawal nominations within the national transmission system, in order to ensure the maximum degree of flexibility for operators, thereby increasing potential liquidity for spot markets and making schedules consistent and compatible with those of interconnected European gas systems, which will in turn encourage natural gas trading within the EU;
• revision of times and means for determining balancing items (settlement of balances), including the terms for the conventional daily profiling of unmeasured daily withdrawal points (i.e. load profiling);
• a change in the criteria for transmission capacity allocation and the introduction of the other aspects envisaged by article 4 of resolution ARG/gas 184/09.

The document is expressly circulated in order to allow operators to evaluate the completeness, consistency and suitability of the proposed framework and measures; interventions are consequently described in their main aspects on the reliance that each of them will be submitted to additional consultations in order to assess their implementation aspects in further detail.