The European Union Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) publishes today the 7th edition of its Report on “contractual congestion in EU gas markets and how it is managed”. Contractual congestion may signal a reduction of market efficiency. It happens when some network users were not able to obtain the capacity product of their choice and had to rely on congestion-mitigating measures to access the gas market. Transmission System Operators, for instance, can apply a number of congestion management procedures (‘CMPs’) to improve market efficiency.
In 2019, congestion was detected at 37 entry and exit sides across Europe, which is around 10% of all Interconnection Points (‘IPs’) in the EU. EU rules foresee that the Firm-Day-Ahead Use-It-Or-Lose-It mechanism has to be applied at these congested IP sides, unless congestion is unlikely to recur in the next years. The Report further finds that the Oversubscription mechanism remains the most used CMP in 2019, whereas the use of other CMPs dropped significantly.
More details about the main findings, ACER Recommendations and full information occurrence of congestions in 2019 can be found on ACER website.
The Report also shares suggestions for further research and calls on researchers to continue studying different aspects of congestion in the EU gas markets.
