Gas, no impact from the EU price cap
(Teleborsa) – The two main EU agencies that supervise the financial and energy markets are not “have identified significant impacts (positive or negative)” on the gas market “that could be unequivocally and directly attributed to the adoption” of the temporary market correction mechanism (MCM), the so-called gas price cap. This can be read in the two final reports published today by the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) and by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), which confirm the preliminary findings.
However, “it should not be inferred from which the MCM may not have any impact on the financial and energy markets or on the security of supply in the future“. For this, ACER and ESMA continue to underline the need to regularly monitor gas markets and gas trading activities to identify risks and help detect potential impacts of the MCM in the future.
Prices falling
The reports mention that i gas prices continued to decline further since the end of January 2023 and remain significantly lower than in the months before the adoption of the MCM Regulation. However, the fall in prices is linked by ACER “ai favorable fundamentals of the gas market (warmer climate, continuous reduction in gas consumption, above average LNG supply, above average gas in storage) in the last months of 2022 and in the first months of 2023″.
Furthermore, the ESMA report also examines the impact of the MCM on the ability of central counterparties (CCPs) to perform their risk management activities, in particular to calculate their exposures and manage potential defaults of clearing members. The analysis carried out “has not led, at this stage, to the identification of significant changes in the CCP risk management here margin requirements which could be attributed to the MCM”.