ANRE: "The natural gas exchanges, functional starting in August"

The natural gas exchanges managed by the OPCOM (the operator of the energy exchange) and the Romanian Commodities Exchange (BRM), will become functional starting in August, said Niculae Havrileţ, the president of the ANRE (the regulator of the Romania energy market).

"The regulation concerning the centralized market for natural gas was published on Wednesday in the Official Gazette. The ANRE will now move to the licensing of the OPCOM and BRM and the approval of the trading regulations. The Regulatory Committee will have these items on the agenda in the coming meetings, so that in August natural gas will be tradable on the OPCOM and the BRM".

As early as last winter, the ANRE received from the OPCOM and the BRM, the working regulations for some of the gas trading platforms which the two operators submitted for approval. Market sources were saying that there is still a long way to go from having two natural gas exchanges on paper and until the actual trading begins. This year's first trading months year will only bring small volumes of natural gas on the exchanges. Our sources are also saying that even though the operators were reluctant in the beginning, they now want to come in and trade transparently: "Romgaz, a state owned company which will go public in autumn, will certainly come in and trade. Petrom recently told the authorities that it supports transparent trading. E.ON and GDF Suez, the biggest distributors and suppliers, will also trade".

According to our sources, the operators had asked for the trades to be anonymous, in other words having only prices and volumes be revealed, without the names of the companies. Multinationals trade on several markets and have expressed their concern that the low prices on our market will cause them problems, in other countries, where the tariffs are a lot higher.

The General Rules approved by the ANRE stipulate: "The title holders of the license for the administration of the centralized market publish on their websites the results of the gas bidding session, mentioning the starting price, the adjudication price, the contracted quantity, the delivery period, as well as the list of the delivery period, as well as the list of the participants in the bidding, after the closing of the bidding session".

According to our sources, another problem raised by the operators was that the ANRE sets the imports quota monthly and announces the price increase percentage quarterly, as part of the liberalization process. This situation does not give operators predictability, and the rate of increase of the price as part of the liberalization process is set by the ANRE.

According to the quoted sources, Romgaz is also concerned about transparent trading since the company has significant uncollected receivables from its sales of natural gas. Romgaz would recoup these amounts through payment scheduling, and trading on the exchange (ed. note: will have guarantee systems) means the company could blow its chances of collecting part of those receivables.

Following the consultation with several market operators, the OPCOM has proposed a type of product with applicability on the Romanian natural gas market, characterized by a far less intense competition than on the energy market, namely the monthly contract for base load delivery, respectively.

The BRM also has simple or double competitive double auctions, for trading periods ranging from one month to a year.