Publication details
Natural Gas Reverse Flows in the Danube Strategy Region. Current State and Outlook
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Monograph |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | The continental natural gas market has undergone profound changes in recent years. Within a very short timeframe, the global economic crisis and the silent unconventional gas revolution in the U.S. have together shifted the global LNG market into a buyer’s market. The resulting LNG glut in the Atlantic basin has crushed natural gas prices and greatly incentivized hub trading schemes over prevailing long-term contract arrangements. What we can now observe in Western Europe is an expansion of gas-to-gas competition based short term trading or spot-indexed contracts, which dramatically changes an environment that was originally designed to provide the suppliers with stable revenues over long periods of time in order to justify the large capital investments in developing the resources and necessary infrastructure. In Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), this system has been maintained mostly by Gazprom’s interests in the region. In this context, it is remarkable that many CEE countries were only able to take advantage of the changes which are happening in the Western Europe, and which pose a major challenge for the Gazprom export model due to the measures they have undertaken, after the gas crises of 2006 and 2009. Among these measures, bi-directional interconnectors (BDICs) play a substantial role. Nearly a decade after the 2006 crisis, it is now a good time to look at the ways they have been implemented, what changes they have introduced, and how they fit into the game-changing events of the past few years. |