Regulation is hurting investment in European gas assets, killing volatility in trade, and driving players out of the market, the CEO of Petronas Energy Trading Limited, Klaus Reinisch, said at the European Autumn Gas Conference in Geneva Thursday.
"What is wrong and why isn't this free market that we've all worked so hard for, that we've developed in Europe, generating what we need for these long-term investors?" he said. "One thing is -- we're certainly over regulated."
Since October 7, companies have had to report all EU wholesale gas and power trades and orders to trade on organized market places such as exchanges and broker platforms to ACER, under the EU's energy market transparency regulation REMIT.
"That also means that they come and check every time, any time there's speculative play -- it becomes very difficult," Reinisch said.
He also targeted the REMIT obligations which require all maintenance events be made public.
"As soon as one of my terminals, or my plants, goes down, that terminal has to post it online and let everybody in the market know before they make a call to the trading floor," he said. "That's just losing volatility, [it's] creating fatigue in the market."
"We have a lot of counter-parties exiting, banks have left, players are becoming less and less," he said.
As of November 5, there were 4,232 companies registered to be able to report their trades and orders to trade to ACER, its REMIT website showed.
Companies can contract the reporting out to third parties known as registered reporting mechanisms.
As of the end of October, 31 of the 35 approved RRMs were actively reporting, its director Alberto Pototschnig said earlier this month.
ACER is processing more than 700 applications from other potential RRMs, he said.
A further obligation under REMIT to report all other wholesale energy contracts, including over-the-counter standard and non-standard supply contracts, as well as capacity contracts and other fundamental data from TSOs, LNG and storage facility operators, starts on April 7.
