Tariffs of natural gas in Europe

European natural gas price systems are overlooked through a few basic guidelines. First are dispatched the main constraints that any people in charge of pricing must deal with: government rules and competitiveness requirements. Then attention is paid to various solutions that can be settled and to their economic implications: value or cost pricing, uniform rates, segregation according to gas use, interruptibility management. Examples of many European countries show that very different formulas have been chosen from one state to another, and that no common structure do arise. 1 fig., 1 tab