The Romanian Commodity Exchange (BRM) leadership disagrees with the proposals according to which the gas ring is to be given to the OPCOM electricity operator, not even in part, told energynomics.ro Gabriel Purice, general manager of the institution. He said he disagreed with the idea of “compensating” BRM by maintaining the ring of the bilateral agreements, while the next day market agreements would go to OPCOM.
In a press conference, the Romanian Commodities Exchange, announced that it will shortly launch for transaction forward and spot products with clearing services provided in partnership with KELER CCP. Starting with 2018, BRM has scheduled the start of trading the futures contracts with options.
At the same time, the accusations of lack of transparency in the motivation presented by the parliamentary group supporting the gas ring transfer have been deemed as “false”, according to Purice. “Not even us could understand it”, said Purice, asked by energynomics.ro, which is the stake of tranferring the gas market.
Some players in the market have accused the BRM agreements of some lack of transparency, but the BRM leadership denies this, claiming that the commodity exchange is in full compliance with ANRE regulations. For added transparency, BRM has decided to allow real-time access to information in the platform for the interested media organizations.
At the same time, the idea supported by the parlamentary initiators of the gas law amendment, according to which all over the world there is only one strong player for each market, is false. “There are three to ten operators in each market”, says Purice. “The justification [of the commissions of the Chamber of Deputies for amending the provisions of the Emergency Ordinance 64/2016, e.n.) is clearly forced and invented. What is the purpose, what are the reasons and what is behind, we have not been able to understand. However, in the PSD governance program, in the Energy chapter, the elimination of monopolies is foreseen. I do not know how this correlates with the initiative that came from a group of PSD MPs”, said Purice. “We trust that this is not the position of the Government and of the ruling coalition.”
On the other hand, the BRM officials stressed out that they never supported the obligation to send 100% of the gas transactions to the centralized exchange. “There are Purchase Power Agreements (energy acquisition agreements – e.n.) around the world, without which a supplier can not participate in a market, because it has no predictability for three to four years ahead”, and a producer cannot engage in considerable investments, which would be non-bankable.
The volume of natural gas traded in the first six months at BRM was 44,25 TWh, almost three times the volume traded in the same period last year. This represents about 71% of the national consumption of natural gas over the first six months.
