Greece proposes a six-point plan to address the energy price surge, including a price-cap mechanism, while saying that an immediate ban on Russian natural gas imports isn’t realistic.
The Greek government suggests a market intervention that should “protect proper functioning of the gas wholesale market, which has been under considerable stress following the deepening conflict in Ukraine with severe side effects in the electricity produced by gas as well,” the letter, sent to European Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said.
“The short-term disruption is so massive that it’s imposing such a big burden on our consumers but also on our businesses that it will no longer be manageable at the level of the national budgets,” Mitsotakis said in an interview with Bloomberg TV Wednesday.
The EU announced a number of measures Tuesday that include more renewable gases, quicker deployment of wind and solar energy and greater energy savings. That will help give the EU the potential to effectively replace the 155 billion cubic meters of Russian gas it currently imports well before the end of the decade, with 101.5 billion this year.
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“I don’t think any immediate ban on imports of Russian natural gas is a realistic proposition at present,” the Greek premier said.
To address the short-term effects of the energy-price crisis, Greece’s six-point plan sees:
- A cap on title transfer facility (TTF) prices
- A fluctuation band on TTF prices limiting volatility
- Stress-related TTF fixed-price setting as an emergency reaction only, to declarations regarding pipeline gas flows from Russia
- Gross profit margin caps in the wholesale electricity markets, for example 5% based on market regulations monitoring production costs and LCOE on production assets
- Consideration of a time-limited option to only allow trading with physical delivery
- Increasing liquidity in the natural gas market by market coupling among EU, U.S. and Asia
“I strongly believe that unusual times require unusual measures,” Mitsotakis says in his letter.
Source: Bloomberg
