‘Centraal Europa beter toegankelijk maken voor westers gas’

15 mei 2015 – Gertjan Lankhorst (CEO GasTerra) vindt dat de landen in Centraal Europa beter toegankelijk moeten worden voor gas uit het Westen. ‘Grote delen van Oost- en Centraal-Europa zijn te afhankelijk van Russisch gas.’

Lankhorst zegt dit in een interview van EnergyBoardroom.
Vraag van EnergyBoardroom: Russia has traditionally provided large amounts of natural gas to Europe, but with these shaky conditions across in Eastern Europe, what measures should both governmental authorities as well as companies like GasTerra do to ensure security and the continued supply of natural gas to Europe?
Antwoord van Lankhorst: ‘In the very short term, Russian and Ukrainian authorities need to negotiate a price for Russian gas delivered to Ukraine. This is short term and of course not fundamentally solving the problem. What is partially responsible for this problem is that large parts of Central and Eastern Europe are too dependent on Russian gas. What we must do is create a competitive market not only in the Northwest of Europe but also in the East. This can be done by creating government policies in those countries that really implement all the European energy legislation packages and regulation on how a competitive gas market should function. In my opinion, with not too much money you can achieve quite a lot in making the Central European countries better accessible for gas to flow from West to East. Lastly, we must look at the way the hubs in the UK and in the Netherlands have become successful. These hubs are now the dominant places where gas is traded in Europe and the price is extremely reliable. It is a liquid market; there is no possibility for any supplier or buyer to influence the price. This recipe that has led to the emergence of these hubs must be translated to the Eastern part of Europe as well. It requires two things: the TSOs that exist there to facilitate this hub and a market maker—a company that is willing to put volume at a certain price on the market all the time. These are all elements of what can be summarized as creating a competitive market throughout all of Europe.’
In het interview benadrukt Lankhorst ook het belang van een veel hogere prijs voor CO2-emissies: ‘We are faced with the reality that coal is much cheaper and that we don’t have a carbon price that is sufficient to bridge that gap between the competitiveness of coal or gas. So, we can advocate it, but hard economics don’t work out in our favor. What we try to do is to put pressure on authorities to reform the ETS in such a way that carbon prices become high enough to encourage investment in efficient technology in Europe. This is absolutely necessary. Some steps have been taken, but it is still not sufficient. We are trying to put forward the advantages of gas, which are twofold.’

Bronnen
Interview EnergyBoardroom, 14 mei 2015: Interview: Gertjan Lankhorst – CEO, GasTerra – Netherlands
Ook te lezen op de website van GasTerra