Gas supplies – Photo EC
(BRUSSELS) – The first tender with a new mid-term product for joint EU purchasing of gas under the EU’s AggregateEU programme closed Tuesday night, with offers for a total volume of 97.4 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas.
The role of the EU Energy Platform is to pool demand, coordinate infrastructure use, negotiate with international partners and prepare for joint gas and hydrogen purchases.
Through the AggregateEU mechanism, the European Commission collected 34 bcm of gas demand from 19 companies last week. These volumes were put out to tender, and the supplies offered are almost triple the demand.
The suppliers and consumers have now been matched through the AggregateEU platform, and companies are now able to enter into contractual negotiations bilaterally.
EC vice-president Maros Sefcovic hailed the success of the EU’s joint purchase of gas, which he saide helped to calm markets and diversify purchase options for European consumers, leverage the EU’s collective economic weight, and boost predictability in gas deliveries.
Under the first mid-term tender buyers were able to submit gas demand for multiple 6-month periods, up to a maximum of 5 years, running from April 2024 to October 2029.
The mid-term tender is a new service offered by the Commission under the AggregateEU instrument to match buyers and sellers beyond the short-term crisis we have faced during the past two winters.
The aim of the new product is to ensure stability and predictability of supplies to the participating companies in the coming years, building on the foundations of the crisis mechanism put in place in 2023.
More tenders, both short and mid-term, are due to follow throughout the year. At the end of last year, the European Parliament and EU Council reached a provisional political agreement on the Hydrogen and Decarbonised gases package which will turn the joint purchasing of gas into a permanent instrument.
AggregateEU first mid-term tender
Provisional political agreement on the Hydrogen and Decarbonised gases package
