Question 1.1.5

Question 1.1.5

Our Exchange, approximately every 6 months, runs regulated auctions for acquiring gas.

Auctions are created and organised through the passing of a resolution of a public administrative authority. These auctions are not freely produced at any time, they only happen periodically subject to the terms and conditions set by the mentioned Resolution.

Several vendors, previously qualified according to Rules approved by a public administrative authority, freely submit bids. There are two types of auctions:

  • In the first type, run one each year, cushion gas is bought for its use in the new gas storage sites to be put into operation during the following year. The amount to be bought is known in advance and the participants present complex bids of the gas to be sold with different delivery options (Virtual Point, interconnection, GNL, GNL in ships, …). At the moment, there is only one buyer.
  • In the second type, run every 6 months, gas is sold to last resort retailers. The amount is also known in advance, but in this case, the auction is run as descending clock auction with several rounds. Once the results are known the acquired gas is distributed in previously established percentages between the different last resort retailers.

The buyers do NOT submit any bid during the auction and they are previously nominated (e.g Last resort retailers appointed by the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism).This predetermined set of buyers are known before the auction starts and they are obliged to buy the result of the auctions without any chance to refuse it.

The result of the auction will produce bilateral contracts with physical settlement between each of the successful bidding vendors and each of the buyer but just only one party (the sellers) have been able to determine the price of the contracts, having the other party (the buyer) the obligation to accept it according the results of the auction.

In any case, XXX Exchange does not participate in the settlement, payment, collaterals or management of these contracts.

As there is not a many-to-many trading possibility (because only the sellers submit bids), these auctions do not comply with the definition of organised market place (Article 2(4) of the REMIT Implementing Regulation). So, XXX Exchange does not have to report orders and trades and is not obliged to offer these services to the participants. Participants have to report on their own, but just only the final bilateral contracts that were created at the end of the auction.


Answer

From the Agency’s point of view, the TRUM, available on the REMIT Portal, already addresses this question on page 15. If the Auction is not a multilateral system or any other system or facility in which multiple third-party buying and selling interests in wholesale energy products are able to interact in a way that results in a contract and therefore not an Organised Market Place (which has to be assessed by the person who runs the Auction), then the orders should not be reported. However, any trade concluded in such a platform has to be reported in Phase 2 (7 April 2016) as any other bilateral contract.

Updated: 
16/11/2015