ACER Still Finds Contractual Congestion In The European Gas Transmission Network

The Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) publishes today its fourth report on Contractual Congestion, a situation in which the level of firm capacity demand exceeds the technical capacity. ACER has identified congestion at 9% of the entry and exist sides of the Interconnection Points (‘IPs’) within the EU Gas Transmission Network.

This year only 23 interconnection sides out of the 247 IPs analysed were congested, compared to the 41 out of 246 identified in the Agency’s previous report. On the other hand, for another 55 IP sides the Gas Year 2017/18 product was not offered in 2016. In 2015 only 23 IP sides were in a similar condition. This means that it is difficult to assess whether contractual congestion has improved overall in Europe. At the congested points a slight increase of FDA UIOLI was observed, and no application of Oversubscription & Buy Back has been identified.  

This Report develops on the list of IPs where the Firm Day Ahead Use-It-or-Lose-It (‘FDA UIOLI’) congestion mechanism has to be applied in order to guarantee that unused capacity will be brought back to the market. It also reveals to what extent the other Congestion Management Procedures (‘CMP’) have been applied in the European Union. For more information, please click here.