German-Austrian Debottleneck Planned

Austria's energy regulator E-Control and Germany's networks regulator BNetzA said July 3 they welcome the first joint market-based process to boost gas transport capacity from Germany to Austria. 

The process is being jointly led by Austrian transmission system operator Gas Connect Austria (GCA) and, on the south German side, by its Bavarian counterpart Bayernets.

Because of usually lower gas wholesale prices in Germany, demand for gas transport capacity from Germany to Austria is high, and regularly exceeds supply, says BNetzA, an imbalance that often leads to capacity bottlenecks: "Therefore, it was necessary to start a project based on the market demand, which would raise the additional demand and identify the required expansion measures."

The new capacity to be created was offered to market participants on the PRISMA booking platform on July 2, 2018.

"It has been shown that the ability to book capacity has not been sufficiently used by market participants to carry out the project. But as the additional needs are likely to persist, stakeholders will test an optimisation of certain aspects of the project, in order to be able to offer the capacity again in an optimized form at the next annual auction," the two regulators said. 

GCA and Bayernets did not release their own statements July 3. However GCA and its Czech counterpart Net4Gas have been looking at ways to facilitate trading, but more through swaps at the two countries' virtual hubs, rather than physical flows, under a system designed to come into effect July 2.