Romanian regulator ANRE plans new tariff for trading on the country’s exchange

Traders on the Romanian power exchange OPCOM might face a new tariff instead of the fee currently charged for exporting energy, regulator ANRE told ICIS on Tuesday. The export fee is due to be scrapped so that Romania can join a project to couple the electricity markets of Hungary, Serbia and the Czech Republic.

The new tariff will apply when traders record and carry out a transaction on the exchange. ANRE did not say how high it would be or when the proposal will be made official.

Traders thought this would push up prices marginally on the exchange, as it is forbidden to trade outside the OPCOM platform in Romania (see EDEM 18 September 2012).

“Seeing as OPCOM has a monopoly on where the trades are carried out, [traders] will not have a choice, but have to pay whatever OPCOM asks for,” one market participant said.

There have been moves towards an OTC platform running alongside OPCOM, with a council made up of government officials and industry stakeholders – the consultative council – sending a proposal on a new market structure to ANRE.

ANRE has now suggested some changes to this proposal according to trading sources, although the regulator did not confirm this.

One change could be that OPCOM would allow faster auctions on its curve platform, the centralised market for bilateral contracts (CMBC).

Transactions could be concluded in ongoing sessions, instead of on a weekly basis.

OPCOM could also make contracts trading both on the CMBC and on the exchange’s Day-ahead platform less flexible by introducing standard volumes. This would force producers to balance out their energy output.

Sources said this would affect the capacity and expected profit of the bilateral power purchase agreements that Romania’s state-owned power generators have struck with buyers in the private sector.

One trader said a fair fee for trading on a potential OTC platform would be €0.01-0.02/MWh. “Otherwise it is not worth it,” he said.

Market coupling

ANRE’s plans to change the Day-ahead regulation and tariffs come as Romania aims for market coupling with Hungary, Serbia and the Czech Republic.

In a June meeting, ANRE said that Romania would have to scrap its export tariffs in order to join the market coupling (see EDEM 28 June 2013).

ANRE president Niculae Havrilet said that the committee in charge of the market coupling project aimed to set out a plan with clear deadlines at a meeting in Prague, the Czech Republic on Tuesday.

At the time of publishing, the committee had not said if this happened. Sophie Udubasceanu/Karolina Zagrodna