The European Energy Exchange (EEX) will start OTC clearing for UK gas futures on 29 February, the bourse said Wednesday. Trading participants that are already admitted on the EEX Derivatives Market for natural gas can use the new service once they have registered for it at ECC, the clearing house of EEX.
Declining demand for Spanish gas-fired generation combined with unusually warm weather conditions this winter has led to an 8.7% drop in LNG imports to Europe in the second half of 2011, according to Deutsche Bank. Gas demand growth in Spain is forecast to remain sluggish as utilities are likely to favour coal over gas due to Spain's domestic coal subsidy scheme that will remain in place until 2014, analysts led by Mark Lewis in Deutsche Bank's latest European gas report.
China's State Electricity Regulatory Commission (SERC) has forecast an 8.5% drop in power consumption in 2012 on the back a slow-down in China's economic growth. Compared with the 11.7% surge in electricity demand to 4.7 trillion kilowatts hours in 2011, this development marks a significant decline in China's energy hunger.
The link to Trayport's 'Global Vision (GV) Screen' as a trading interface has helped to boost the liquidity at the European Energy Exchange (EEX). "At the EEX, future trades are effectuated via Eurex and spot trades via Comserv, but trades can also be made directly via the GV Screen interface. This helped to boost liquidity together with other steps undertaken in 2011 such as extended Cross-Margining in the clearing process," EEX marketing representative, Eileen Hieke, told Gas-to-Power Journal today.
Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) today announced forecast of a fresh record volume of natural gas consumed for power generation as it aims to close the gap in nuclear power supply following the shutdown of its Fukushima Daiichi plant following an earthquake last March. For the financial year ending March 31, Tepco forecasts gas use will rise to a record of 22.67 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG), increasing an earlier estimate issued in November of 22.6 million tonnes.
Investments in carbon capture storage (CCS) for new-built and operational power plants has a softening effect on carbon prices - albeit not a big one, Energy Brainpool's chief analyst Tobias Federico estimates.
"The scale of the price effect largely depends on how widespread the implementation of CCS technology will be implemented in the power generation sector," he told Gas-to-Power Journal in an interview.
BDEW, Germany's energy and water association, today released data on the country's power generation mix. Gas-fired generation was virtually unchanged at 14% in 2011. The share of renewable energies in the country's overall power generation mix surged by 20% in 2011, according to BDEW statistics. In 2011, renewable energies have already overtaken nuclear plants (18%) and coal-fired power generation (19%) in terms of market share.