Transport, the strategic issue at stake for the future of natural gas in Europe: avoidance of hidden collusion and implementation of efficient pricing

Two main conditions must simultaneously be met for the European gas market to become a competitive market: 1) the absence of collusion among the various actors; 2) the setting of a fair and efficient tariff system for the gas pipelines. In order to evaluate the possibility of collusion among European operators, we give in the first part of the paper a picture of the different actors involved in the upstream segment and the transport-distribution one. We show in the second part that the regulators have to make two kinds of choices concerning the transport system pricing with TPA: 1) a choice concerning the type of control (price cap or cost plus); 2) a choice concerning the allocation of fixed costs between the capacity-booking charges and the actual transportation cost charges.