AggregateEU, this has been the name chosen for the application that will allow European countries to set up a joint gas platform and that goes into operation on Tuesday, April 25.
It is a technological development that will make it possible to connect buyers and sellers under a structure similar to that of dating applications. In the same way as in these applications, the interested parties, in this case producers who want to sell gas and buyers who seek to acquire it, publish their offers and prices on the platform which is managed by Prisma, a technology management company of financial markets.
Once the match takes place, the two participants will continue the negotiation bilaterally and outside the application. In this way, the prices published in this application will be indicative only.
Companies interested in participating will have until May 2 to register their offers and demand requests on the platform. From this moment on, a first auction will be held to match supply and demand, which will be repeated every two months until July 2023.
The objective of this platform is still far from what the politicians initially proposed when they wanted to replicate the mass purchase of masks that the European Union made during the pandemic and which served to lower prices considerably in the gas market.
Member states are required to ensure that 15% of their total technical gas supply capacity is marketed through AggregateEU. For companies, it is, in principle, voluntary, although there are countries that, in order to achieve the Commission's objective, have already published lists of companies that must contribute.
The Ministry of Ecological Transition has confirmed that, after talks with the sector, "in Spain it will not be necessary to establish any legal obligation to fulfill the European commitment to contribute 15% of Spain's gas storage capacity". because there are enough volunteers. This means that the volume of gas they will contract next year will be at least 4.8 terawatt hours (TWh), although no company has made public this interest that the ministry and the European Commission state last week. Some contacts in the framework of a round of talks that representatives of the European Commission held for all countries.
"Buying gas is not buying any product. Permissions and features are needed to manipulate it, a storage that not everyone has. Perhaps the platform manages to attract more attention from Asians to European demand", they hope from the sector.
What raises more doubts is its price-lowering effect. "You have to see it. We will let it begin and we will confirm that, at the very least, it will not have adverse effects on competition", commented the consulted sources.
