An internal EU gas market by 2014 is "100% realistic and will happen," but there will still be more to do, the president of EU gas transmission system operators' body Entsog, Stephan Kamphues, said Friday.
"There's no way out because this has been promised and this will be delivered," Kamphues told Platts in an interview on the sidelines of Gas Infrastructure Europe's annual conference in Edinburgh.
"The only question still open is 'what is really an internal market?' It's more a question of the definition of what has to be achieved," said Kamphues, who is also managing director of German gas TSO Open Grid Europe.
"If in 2014 we have all the harmonization there in balancing, capacity and interoperability, then it's a level playing field," he said.
"When the most important things for the gas market are harmonized...then I think a good piece of the work is done. Perhaps we will have 80% [of the internal market complete] in 2014 and the rest is fine-tuning," he said.
This harmonization relies on the new EU network codes in these areas being agreed and implemented on time, said Kamphues. The codes are being developed by Entsog under a process set out in the EU's 2009 third energy market opening package, in cooperation with the European Commission and the new EU energy regulatory agency ACER.
Entsog plans to submit its first EU network code, on gas capacity allocation, to the EC by the end of this year. The submitted codes can be made binding through approval by an EU committee of national government officials.
"It's absolutely essential that the codes are made binding," said Kamphues, particularly given that the EC still has infringement procedures open against national governments for failing to implement the EU's second energy package properly.
"We could be facing a lengthy implementation period for the third package," he said. "With the codes, everyone has roughly three years to prepare and get their IT systems in place." This push for harmonization will help continue the trend of increased liquidity at the EU's gas trading hubs, and perhaps hub mergers will follow, he said.
"With harmonization the neighboring countries are all functioning in the same way and that will give the whole thing a push," he said. "There will always be spreads between the hubs, but if you look at a movement on the UK's NBP and the reactions on the Dutch TTF and Germany's NetConnect, it's so quick and parallel that I think a lot has been achieved already."
EU leaders have committed to complete the internal gas and power market by 2014. The deadline for implementing most of the provisions in the EU's third package was March 3.
