Platts: UK regulator warns of obstacles to single European gas market

European regulatory agencies want a single gas market in 2014, but face major obstacles in accomplishing that goal, the CEO of UK energy regulator Ofgem, Alistair Buchanan, said Wednesday.

One area, the Guidelines for New Infrastructure, involves building interconnectors between countries, but judging by one such, a link between Slovakia and southern Poland, the rate of progress is glacial.

"Nothing has moved; it is going to be a long, long, grind," Buchanan told the Flame conference in Amsterdam.

There are 43 such projects in the North-South corridor alone.

There was also too much vague language in the documents such as the Guidelines that would help to bring this single market about, so that lawyers would be kept busy deciding what "appropriate incentives" might mean in any context and what companies would need to do to "display" the approved behaviors relating to "social and economic visibility," Buchanan said. 

This extends to other, related documents, such as the Regulations for Energy Market Integrity and Transparency, where the definition of a "market participant" remains unclear, according to some delegates at the conference.

The European Commission is also in disagreement with the Association for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators over the precedence of the Projects of Common Interest -- which Buchanan said added up to some GBP9 billion ($14billion) -- and the Ten Year Statements.

Apart from semantics, there are problems too facing the different member states' energy policies, which have been left to them to decide, he said.  MORE