A stochastic generalized Nash-Cournot model for the northwestern European natural gas markets: The S-GaMMES model

This article presents a stochastic dynamic Generalized Nash-Cournot model to describe the evolution of the natural gas markets. The major gas chain players are depicted including: producers, consumers, storage, and pipeline operators, as well as intermediate local traders. Our economic structure description takes into account market power and the demand representation captures the possible fuel substitution that can be made between oil, coal, and natural gas in the overall fossil energy consumption. The demand is made random because of the oil price fluctuations and we take into account long-term contracts in an endogenous way. The model is applied to represent the European natural gas market and to forecast, until 2035, after a calibration process, patterns of consumption, prices, production, and long-term contract prices and volumes. In terms of policy implications, we show how the perception of the oil price's uncertainty modifies the gas long-term contract volumes in Europe between the producers and the mid-streamers. Finally, we define the value, gain and loss of the stochastic solution adapted to our model and calculate them for each market actor. (authors)