Abstract
Introduction
In the last edition of this report we listed a series of problems affecting
the market. It is increasingly apparent that deregulating energy markets is
not easy. The path is full of pitfalls and very few countries which have
embarked in this course are now where they thought they would be. Three
regions of the world provide many valuable lessons in privatisation and
liberalisation, Europe, North America and South America. Some countries in
each of these regions were the first to embark on energy market liberalisation
and provide many case histories, some with successful and a few with
disastrous outcomes. Another interesting factor in Europe and the US is the
combination of local and central markets; in the US federal versus state and
in Europe national versus the EU. Market deregulation has given an impetus to
the emergence of a small number of very large players which are increasingly
dominating national markets and, some believe, threatening competition.
In 2006 Western Europe produced 11% of the world' s natural gas, the bulk of it
from the North Sea, and consumed 19% of the global total. 40% of imports came
from Russia and 13% from Algeria, with 35% being exported from Norway and the
Netherlands to other European countries. The energy profiles of the various
European countries vary widely. The European energy markets have been subject
to extensive legislation, introduced by the EU for the 15 old members and
extended with varying degrees of compliance negotiated with the 10 new members
who joined in 2004, and the 2 candidate countries. This applies both to
electricity and gas. With a final round of opening in July 2007, only five
countries out of 27 do not have fully open gas markets.
Liberalisation of the natural gas industry has run in parallel with the
liberalisation of the electricity sector but with distinct differences. There
have been two Gas Directives, in 1998 and 2003, and a further report to be
followed by action in 2008. The key provisions of the 1st EU Gas Directive,
1998 were to establish the following conditions; non discriminatory access to
gas infrastructure, unbundling of accounts of monopoly activity, market
opening timetable, and dispute settlement authority. In 2003 the 2nd European
Gas Directive was enacted, to address some key weaknesses in the 1st Directive
and it was decided that an independent regulator must be set up in every
country. The Benchmarking studies showed that significant progress still
remained to be made for full compliance and progress within Member States is
significantly behind that for electricity. It become clear that although
market liberalisation has progressed different countries are not playing on a
level paying field. With the exception of the UK, Europe has been much slower
to liberalise its gas markets and deregulation is lagging behind targets set
by the EU.
Outline of the report
- The Gas Deregulation Report outlines the progress of gas market
deregulation and privatisation in every continent
- It outlines the situation of each of the countries with gas markets
- An overview of the global gas sector
- An extensive series of tables, charts and graphics are contained in the
report
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