AggregateEU, this has been the name chosen for the application that will allow European countries to launch a joint gas platform and that will come into operation this Tuesday, April 25.
This is a technological development that will allow buyers and sellers to be in contact under a structure similar to that of dating applications. As in these, interested parties, in this case producers who want to sell gas and buyers who want to buy it, publish their offers and prices on the platform that is managed by Prisma, a technology management company for financial markets.
Once the match takes place, both participants will continue the negotiation bilaterally and outside the application. In this way, the prices published in this application will only be indicative.
Companies interested in participating will have until May 2 to register their offers and demand requests on the platform. Thereafter, a first auction will be held to match supply and demand, which will be repeated every two months until July 2023, when the emergency measures to alleviate the energy crisis end.
The objective of this platform is very far from what the politicians initially proposed when they tried to replicate in the gas market the massive purchase of masks that the European Union made during the pandemic and served to considerably lower their prices.
Member states are obliged to guarantee that 15% of their total technical gas supply capacity is marketed through AggregateEU. For companies it is, in principle, voluntary although there are countries that, in order to achieve the objective of the Commission, have already published lists of companies that must contribute.
The Ministry of Ecological Transition has confirmed that, after the conversations held with the sector, “in Spain it will not be necessary to establish any legal obligation to comply with the European commitment to provide 15% of the Spanish gas storage capacity”, because there are enough volunteers. This means that the volume of gas that they will contract in the next year will be at least 4.8 terawatt hours (TWh), although no company has made public that interest that the ministry and the European Commission tested last week. Some contacts in the framework of a round of conversations that the representatives of the European Commission made for all the countries.
“Buying gas is not buying any product. Some permissions and characteristics are needed for its manipulation, storage that not everyone has. Perhaps the platform can focus more on European demand for Asiansâ€, they expect from the sector. It can also serve non-regular industries in the market to break barriers and participate in it.
What generates more doubts is its effect to lower prices “It remains to be seen. We are going to let it start and confirm that, at least, it does not have adverse effects on competitionâ€, commented the sources consulted.
