LIBERALIZING AND RESTRUCTURING EUROPEAN NATURAL GAS―WINNERS AND LOSERS

摘要

The focus of this paper is to discuss the salient stakes related to the liberalization and restructuring of the European natural gas markets, emphasizing trading patterns and gas price formation, market structure and supply security, the financing of new gas projects, energy policy and gas competitiveness, and, finally, the likely winners and losers. Since the early 1990s, the European Union (EU) has embarked on a tortuous process of opening the electricity and natural gas markets for competition. The process is slow and difficult because it involves a number of sovereign countries, as well as a supranational entity, that have different traditions and interests. At stake is essentially, but not exclusively, the cost of gas and electricity to consumers and the competitiveness of European industry as well as patterns of power generation, the division of economic rent, and the energy supply risk. In light of the conflicting interests involved, it can be argued that it is remarkable the process of opening European electricity and natural gas markets has commenced at all and is progressing. It is, indeed, difficult to reconcile overall concerns for competitive markets with French preferences for nuclear power, German concerns for coal-fired thermal power, and linked concerns for technology, employment, and especially vested interests.