Market prefers PRISMA option for Polish/German gas capacity

Parties active on the European natural gas market have largely sided with the two German transmission system operators (TSO) that have proposed to use the PRISMA capacity allocation platform at the Mallnow border point with Poland, according to documents released on Monday.

Polish TSO GAZ-SYSTEM and the two German TSOs GASCADE and ONTRAS have not been able to agree on which capacity allocation platform to use at the Mallnow border point where around 80 million cubic metres (mcm) of Russian gas enters Germany every day.

The matter was forwarded the countries’ regulators in October with Germany’s BNetzA launching a market survey at the start of November (click here to read full story).

Out of the nine respondents, seven supported the use of the pan-European PRISMA allocation platform that is used by 41 TSOs on 1584 nodes. Supporters were the Russian Gazprom Marketing and Trading as well as Gazprom Export, the German Uniper, EnbW and RWE as well as Swiss Axpo and Italian Eni.

Some respondents referred to an ACER study from 2015 that found that PRISMA achieved the highest level of compliance in regards to European network codes.

RWE warned that not choosing PRISMA “risks extending the fragmentation of capacity platforms, ultimately to the detriment of the internal market and consumers”.

AXPO pointed out in its response that GAZ-SYSTEM “is the only TSO in Europe [that] markets capacity via its own platform and not via a centralised capacity booking platform”.

The only two respondents who supported using the Polish GSA platform were the Polish incumbent PGNiG and the Polish PKN ORLEN.

Both argued that the availability of services in the Polish language and the option to book with Polish currency makes the platform more inclusive. PKN ORLEN added that the Polish platform “looks more friendly”.

GSA is operated by GAZ-SYSTEM which PGNiG said is an advantage as it would shorten transaction time. Gazprom Export, however, said that PRISMA’s independence from a grid operator is the best basis for “a non-discriminatory and transparent platform”.

The two regulators will have to make a decision within six months. GAZ-SYSTEM did not say how it was planning on proceeding. marcello.kolax@icis.com