BAKU, Azerbaijan, Nov.25
By Leman Zeynalova – Trend:
The pressure on gas prices will go down a bit because a number of plants which have had incidents are coming back on stream, Eurogas President and Executive Vice President of ENGIE, Didier Holleaux told Trend.
“Because we hope that the drought in Brazil will end with the winter, because the limited amount of wind that we had during the summer could also come back to normal during winter and all that will normally alleviate the pressure on the gas market and bring the prices at a lower level. But in any case, the situation is serious and in order to make it more sustainable for our customers, we welcome the efforts by many States to support the less favoured customers with economic support so that they can face their bills. And we also welcomed the efforts by some industrial customers to go more into long term contracts to avoid the short-term impact on prices,” he said.
Holleaux noted the situation is so serious that, as an industry, no proposal can be taken to solve the situation lightly.
“We have to consider all of them seriously and see what can be done. That being said, market reform would take ages because it took decades to build the market, the energy market as we know it. So, no short-term relief can be expected on that side. Joint purchasing platform – it’s complicated. We know that there are competition issues involved and the liabilities and so on. So we can still look at it, but we see it as complicated. Reinforcing storage obligation – well, we know that it's workable and that it brings some relief on the security of supply side. That has been done in France, in Italy. So it may help, but the impact on price remains to be seen. And last but not least, I would say that perhaps different balance between short-term and long-term contract in both the gas and power industry may also help to avoid some volatility on the gas price market,” he added.
---
Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
