CRE deliberation concerning balancing regime developments for the natural gas transmission network in France

GRTgaz has presented a project of progressive changeover to a new market-based balancing system, according to the following principles: quantities of gas required to ensure transmission network balancing are purchased from or sold on the daily and intra-day market by transmission system operators (TSOs); a daily gas balancing price reflecting actual costs borne by every TSO is defined according to these purchases and sales; every day, each shipper residual position after use of the available flexibility and tolerance, is cleared off by transactions at the daily balancing gas price, under terms encouraging shippers to minimise their imbalance. In order to incorporate current development of the French market, which still has low liquidity, GRTgaz proposes to progressively develop the volume of its market transactions. Within this context, from 4 May to 6 June 2006, CRE organised a public consultation concerning balancing regime developments, a summary of which is presented. The last part concerns the CRE decisions. (A.L.B.)