BAKU, Azerbaijan, Oct.15
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
The Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) helped in reducing European gas market volatility, Trend reports with reference to the European Commission.
“European hub prices were in a narrow range, averaging around 24.7–25.9 €/MWh in the second quarter of 2021, measurably higher than in the previous quarter, Q1 2021 (18.2-19.5 €/MWh), adding around 31-39 percent to the price level just within a quarter’s time, which shows a generally increasing price trend. Hub prices reached the highest since Q4 2018, and in year-on-year comparison they rose to three to five times as high, as Q2 2020 (which was the trough of demand destruction driven gas price fall) they averaged around 4.9-7.1 €/MWh. The average TTF hub price was 25.1 €/MWh in Q2 2021, more than four times as much as in Q2 2020. Comparing to Q2 2019, the observed prices were up by 50-110 percent, signaling that current prices are measurably higher than two years before,” reads the report released by the European Commission.
Later in second quarter, prices were mainly impacted by infrastructure events (e.g. outage of the TAP between 17 and 21 May, outages of LNG regasification terminals with significant capacities), said the Commission. “However, it seems that the new TAP route helped in reducing market volatility in 2021 so far, compared with earlier years.”
As the European section of the Southern Gas Corridor, TAP has the capacity to transport approximately 10 billion cubic meters of gas per annum (bcm/a) to several markets in Europe. The pipeline is also designed with the potential to expand its throughput capacity up to 20 bcm/a.
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