Abstract
Dutch gas transport company Gasunie said in March that it would join the
consortium considering
building the Skanled gas pipeline, designed to pump
Norwegian gas to Sweden, Denmark, and potentially
onward to Poland.
Reuters quoted Gasunie CEO Marcel Kramer as saying: ' Skanled' s potential
to
enhance the diversity of supply in the North European region made us
decide to join in this phase.' A
final decision on whether to proceed with
Skanled was expected before the end of 2009, with some
analysts saying the
European and global recession had raised question marks over its
commercial
viability. Gasunie had replaced Swedegas and partly replaced
Goteborg Energi within the eight-strong
Skanled consortium. It has a
strong position in the gas market in northern Germany and its home market
of the Netherlands, with connections to Norwegian and Russian gas supplies as
well as to the Danish,
German, British, and Belgian markets.
Overall,
and bearing in mind the major impact of the current recession, BMI concludes
in our latest
Netherlands Freight Transport Report that freight traffic
across all modes will rise by an annual average
of 0.5% in the 2009-2013
forecast period. This will be on a par with the wider economy and down
from
2.3% in the preceding five years. Slower economic growth is the key
driver of the slowdown in the
freight sector. According to our latest
estimates, transport and communications GDP rose by 2.6% in
2008, 0.7 of a
percentage point ahead of GDP. The total value of transport and communications
GDP will
rise to US$71bn in nominal terms by 2013, representing 9.0% of
the Netherlands' GDP. The transport
and communications sector employed
819,000 people, or 6.1% of the labour force, in 2007. We see that
figure
staying virtually constant at around 817,000 by 2013.
Our overall forecast
for freight carried in the Netherlands is for it to be on a par with the wider
economy
based on a mature industry, good infrastructure, a slower economic
growth rate, and the country' s
openness to foreign trade. We expect the
best performing sector to be airfreight, which, with annual
average growth
of 0.9%, will come through another period of relative turbulence in the
sector, caused by
the European-wide recession. We believe Dutch aviation
and the Air France-KLM alliance in particular,
will ride out the storm. It
will be followed by rail freight, where we are forecasting growth of 0.6%
per
annum, with resilience coming from recent investments - in particular
the opening of a new freight line to
Germany. Pipeline freight will grow
by 0.5% throughout the forecast period, followed by road haulage
and sea
freight at 0.5% each. Inland water transport will bring up the rear, with
growth of 0.2% per
annum.
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