Next station Algeria, in a race against time to accelerate Italy’s autonomy from Russian gas. The gas dossier will be the focus of the Prime Minister’s mission tomorrow dragon in Algiers. But the government is running a parallel race to guarantee the reserves gas for the next winter and thus to guarantee light and heating without criticality. If you don’t start on time in April, you risk a lot from October. And that is why in these hours they have arrived in the new rules Easy, complete with bonuses and guarantees against the risk of billions of dollars in losses to push operators to accelerate gas storage despite still very high gas prices. The first auctions of the year ended practically emptyhanded.
The new auction calendar from Stogit and Edisn Stoccaggi is expected tomorrow, the first date could be set as early as Wednesday. This will be the first technical test to see if the new incentive mechanism being studied by MITE will work. Otherwise, in extreme cases, the state could intervene to ensure that the reserves are replenished by an operator of last resort, such as Snam, and adequate compensation. A scenario not ruled out by the Minister of Ecological Transition, Roberto Cingolani, who yesterday restarted the renewable energy acceleration route and announced the operation of the first new LNG regasification vessel “for the first half of 2023.
Meanwhile, the US President Joe Biden signed the law prohibiting the importation of oil of the Russia. A move that follows the announcement from early March and sees an estimated cut in purchases of 20.4 million barrels per month of crude oil. If you look at last year’s numbers, that’s about $2 billion a month. That’s no small feat, although the United States is actually selfsufficient thanks to the production of shale oil (oil made from tar sands).
THE 5% STOCK PRICE
To give a good idea of what Italian families and businesses are risking in the event of a European Parliamentled embargo on Russian gas, Assoutenti’s latest analysis put inflation above 10% and higher annual spending of + €3,192 forecast per family with direct impact on consumption that could fall by up to 5%. A perverse mechanism that could only calm the approval of an EU cap on methane prices, against which there is still considerable resistance. When it came to storage, on the other hand, Europe was compact: reserves must be brought up to 90% quickly.
Hence Italy’s strategy not to miss the target, since at today’s prices (100 euros per megawatt hour compared to 345 on March 7 last year and 20 euros a year ago), operators should put about 12 billion euros on the table to cover the necessary Gas to buy up front compared to the 3 billion used last year. The risk of astronomical balance sheet losses if they sell methane next winter is too high. For this reason, the government has introduced new rules to speed up and simplify the replenishment of reserves. And the first chapter of the threestage intervention, well explained in the April 8 Arera resolution, envisages a “stock reward for operators who will participate in the next seasonal and monthly auctions. It is currently 5 euros per megawatt hour. So to speak, storage operators are paid with a 5% bonus per megawatt hour purchased according to current prices. A help to complement the zeroing of the reserve prices. The week will show whether it is enough to cover the risk losses for the operators.
TO PLAN
However, a “Plan B is already envisaged that effectively establishes an antiloss guarantee scheme with a reference price that limits the risk of operators but also prevents certain risks from being passed on to households and businesses that use gas and electricity Consume electricity. This provides for the introduction of the “twoway differential agreements” mentioned by Arera. “Considering that this type of contract can generate significant costs for the system,” explains the agency, “it is appropriate that the relative methods of implementation are determined with the involvement of interested parties”. Therefore, after brief consultation with the companies, Arera will determine the scope of the guarantee itself, including a shortterm guarantee of one billion dollars.
However, if this incentive does not work, the only option is to entrust the storage to the state. The final point of the intervention is that Snam, the first storage operator in the EU, will deploy a single solution for storage by the end of the month, which it normally does in 180 days for its own use. Therefore, according to some estimates, it needs to collect about 600700 million cubic meters of gas. A nice help for national stocks photographed at 30% today versus a European average of 26.5%.
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