Outcome Stakeholder Group Meeting DTe

The regional energy market for gas of the North West region has organized the first stakeholdersmeeting in the Kurhaus in The Hague (October 9 and 10 2006). 120 representatives including regulators, TSO's, operators and market parties like shippers, traders, end users and governments got together to discuss the 6 priorities for the region. The Meeting was considered a succes and participants welcomed the initiative.

In the morning Peter Plug, director of DTe and Chair of the north- north west region, announced that he was very happy with the cooperative attitude of the operators in the implementation group. In the afternoon 4 workshops were organized to provide practical advise to the regulators on how to take the priorities further and to agree on the approach to take away the identified barriers in the process.

In his end speech Peter Plug concluded that taking away the barriers to get to a fully integrated regional market is a difficult process and that building trust between the parties, regulators, operators and stakeholders would be high on his list. Possibly even a relatively quick win.

In the Implementation Group (IG) meeting the next day the input of the Stakeholders Group (SG) was discussed and the IG and the regulators fully agreed on the steps to be taken on all priorities. Further implementation will take off with questionnaires and workshops involving the operators as well as the market parties.

The TSO's also announced that they will do a study on the practicalities of daily auctions of unused capacity in answer to the proposal of EFET. This announcement was welcomed by the regulators.

All interested parties are asked to state their interest if they would like to work on further progress in workshops on the priorities.