On September 16, 17 in Vienna, Austria, the first meeting of the SEEGAS Joint Steering Committee regarding inter-regional cooperation for the development of an integrated gas market for Southeast and Eastern Europe (SEEGAS) was held. This is the first joint offline meeting under the SEEGAS initiative and since the signing of the Stakeholder Memorandum.

The Ukrainian Energy Exchange was represented by development manager Lisse Geert van Vliet. Among the participants were also representatives of Gas Systems, TGE, CEEGEX, FGSZ, CEGH, GTSOU, UEEX, Moldovatransgaz, Transgaz, BRM, BGH, HENEX, DESFA.

Ліссе Гірт ван Влієт

The meeting participants discussed the organizational structure, format and tasks to be performed by the SEEGAS Joint-Steering Committee (JSC). The participants also touched upon both the market problems that can be solved in the short term, and the strategic vision of the European natural gas market.

Lisse Geert van Vliet expressed UEEX’s interest in fruitful cooperation between the signatories of the memorandum and strengthening of integration within the framework of the SEEGAS project, because building a powerful market depends on the joint efforts of each of the participants. For its part, the Ukrainian Energy Exchange conducts intensive work on the development of the gas market, in particular in the direction of standardization, ensuring full-fledged clearing for energy markets and providing an opportunity for cross-border trade in natural gas.

Lisse Geert van Vliet outlined the possible stages of cooperation between exchanges in the region. In particular, at the first stage, UEEX is ready to open gas trading with a transfer point at the border to provide an opportunity for non-residents to trade gas on the exchange not only in UGS, then exchanges can cooperate to open information windows to view trading spaces (markets) of other exchanges in one interface.

An important step will be the unification of the products and processes of exchanges, which will allow opening single trading windows where a participant can simultaneously trade in several markets from one screen.

The UEEX representative also focused on an important issue - the transfer of gas supply points from the western to the eastern border of Ukraine in order to successfully develop the market and cooperation within SEEGAS.