The gas infrastructure, which includes LNG terminals, gas storage plants and pipelines, will definitely require significant investment in the future. Transitions can be seen in the European gas market.
According to Jeroen de Joode at TU Delft, less regulation from Europe and increased room for competition are essential for this kind of investment. De Joode received his PhD on June 28 for his thesis related to this subject. His research was partly carried out at the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN).
Increasing importance of renewable energy resources, merging of the gas markets in Europe, and growing dependence on imported gas highlight the need for investments in the gas infrastructure. De Joode’s research was focused on the regulation of gas infrastructure investments in the European Union.
The situation was analyzed by De Joode, and according to him transitions are needed to promote increased room for competition in the gas infrastructure investments. In present regulations, the competition advantages are not adequately realized which results in useless expenses for the regulatory authority. A model has been initiated in Europe to offer exemptions to regulations in order to increase new gas infrastructure investments. This model does not take adequate account of the differences between various kinds of gas infrastructure.
De Joode made a second proposal that regulation must clearly differentiate between various kinds of gas infrastructure. Hence, a big difference can be identified if it concerns an LNG terminal or a pipeline. This denotes that improvements can be done in the current regulation by enabling competition to play a key role in various types of gas infrastructure.
Source: http://home.tudelft.nl/
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