Brussels unveils first-ever EU cap on gas prices but as ‘last resort’

After weeks of mounting expectations and political strain, the European Fee has unveiled a proper proposal to ascertain what may quickly be the first-ever EU-wide cap on fuel costs, however with such stringent situations that it’d by no means be truly triggered.

The extraordinary measure will act as a security ceiling towards instances of maximum volatility and rampant hypothesis within the fuel markets.

It’s going to apply to the Title Switch Facility (TTF), the Dutch digital hub the place shippers and shoppers commerce fuel provides.

The TTF is the main reference for Europe’s complete vitality sector, with its costs having a robust affect on the payments that firms and customers obtain each month.

Since Russia launched its warfare in Ukraine, the TTF has seen record-breaking ups and down. After hitting an all-time excessive over the summer season, costs stabilised however nonetheless stay very excessive.

“This isn’t a regulatory intervention to set the value on the market at an artificially low degree,” stated Kadri Simson, the European commissioner for vitality, whereas presenting the brand new laws on Tuesday afternoon.

“It’s a mechanism of final resort to stop, and if essential, handle episodes of extreme excessive costs which aren’t in step with international worth traits.”

The draft textual content will now go to EU international locations for dialogue and approval. Vitality ministers are scheduled to satisfy on Thursday to carry a primary change of views.

“What we now have proposed at the moment can discover frequent floor between diverging views,” Simson stated, acknowledging the “lengthy course of ” that preceded the long-awaited proposal.

“This isn’t a silver bullet that may deliver fuel costs down. Nevertheless it gives a strong instrument that we will use once we want it.”

Two key situations

The cap, as designed by the European Fee, will likely be mechanically activated however provided that two key situations are met:

1.  If TTF costs attain or surpass €275 per megawatt-hour for a minimum of two weeks.
2.  If TTF costs are €58 larger than the market reference of liquefied pure fuel (LNG) throughout a minimum of 10 consecutive buying and selling days.

These two situations are supposed to act as safeguards and make sure the EU’s safety of provides shouldn’t be threatened. The bloc has change into closely reliant on LNG to offset the lack of Russian pipeline fuel, which the Kremlin drastically minimize off in retaliation for Western sanctions.

However LNG is very versatile: cargoes journey around the globe looking for to maximise their income.

Current media reviews counsel that dozens of LNG ships have been lingering round Europe’s coast, ready for costs to go up earlier than unloading their provides.

Stopping these much-needed LNG tankers from being re-directed to Asia, the place no worth cap exists, has been the European Fee’s principal concern whereas designing the legislative proposal.

A bunch of member states, together with Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Hungary, have insisted securing dependable provides should be a high precedence, larger than securing inexpensive costs.

On the opposite aspect of the desk, a bigger faction has for months advocated for a extra aggressive and radical worth cap, one that might embody all fuel imports and wholesale transactions.

The controversy initially developed behind the scenes in Brussels however later acquired a better political dimension, with heads of governments explicitly calling for – or towards – the value cap.

Ultimately, the Fee struck a cautious, risk-averse place: an higher restrict for TTF costs set on the excessive degree of €275 per megawatt-hour, a far cry from the €115 seen in current days.

Senior EU officers point out the measure, formally referred to as a “market correction mechanism,” must be seen as a instrument of deterrence quite than intervention as a result of the vitality disaster has a worldwide dimension that Europe alone can not handle.

How will the cap work?

As soon as the cap is authorized by EU international locations, it will likely be in place for one 12 months, beginning in January.

The European Fee, along with regulatory businesses, will monitor the scenario within the vitality markets to see if the 2 key situations are met.

If the situations are current for greater than two weeks, the cap will likely be mechanically triggered. Transactions on the TTF that exceed €275 per megawatt-hour won’t be accepted.

As soon as the situations disappear, the cap will likely be switched off. The method may re-start if the scenario worsens.

Because the standards for activation are so particular, the activation appears unlikely to occur. TTF costs broke the €275 barrier for under a handful of days in August when governments have been speeding to fill their underground fuel storage forward of the chilly season.

“We’ve got to be prepared for excessive circumstances,” stated Simson, who confronted a number of questions on how the €275 threshold was determined.

“It was troublesome. Everyone is conscious of the doable dangers,” she added. “As any political choice, this proposal is a balancing act.”

On high of this, the Fee proposes an emergency brake to right away droop the mechanism if it threatens the safety of fuel provide, creates monetary instability, endangers present contracts, disturbs the inner market, or stimulates electrical energy consumption.

The suspension will likely be carried out when both of those circumstances is detected or when they’re anticipated to materialise. The chief will make the choice in a matter of hours.

The cap may also solely apply to month-ahead contracts struck on the TTF, which signify over a fifth of the hub’s transactions however have a big affect on all fuel transactions.

It will exclude offers for fast supply and bilateral contracts signed outdoors of the TTF, referred to as over-the-counter (OTC), that are more durable to trace down.

Senior EU officers say this exception will act as a “security valve” to assist safe LNG cargoes which might be susceptible to being re-routed to different areas searching for larger income.

All in all, the strict standards and the preventive safeguards create a “very restrained model” of the much-anticipated EU cap on fuel costs, stated Simone Tagliapietra, a senior fellow on the Bruegel assume tank.

“The prices might outweigh the upside, however the proposal comprises adequate safeguards to make sure that prices don’t spiral uncontrolled. Nonetheless, the proposal doesn’t stack up both economically or politically,” Tagliapietra informed Euronews, in response to Tuesday’s announcement.

“It would win over a number of international locations, however doesn’t handle the issues which might be driving the decision from greater than half of EU international locations for a worth cap. The EU wants extra to deal with the distributional implications of the vitality disaster: a strong joint fuel buying scheme and an EU vitality disaster fund.”