The European Commission wants EU countries to start buying gas together “well before summer,” Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic said on Monday, in a bid to help countries replenish their reserves and avoid a shortage of gas. supply next winter.
After a first meeting of representatives of the countries of the European Union to coordinate the planned purchases, Sefcovic said that he had urged the member states to engage quickly with the main market players in their countries to estimate the volumes of gas that they will jointly purchase. .
Sefcovic asked the industry to confirm whether it was interested in joining the community’s joint gas purchasing scheme, with which the Commission hopes to help Europe refill depleted storage reserves and negotiate lower prices using the collective buying power of countries.
“We are working with a tight schedule to prepare in time for the upcoming winter and storage replenishment season,” he said in a statement.
EU officials said that some large energy companies have been reluctant to participate, as they can already negotiate their own gas deals and doubt that the EU plan will lower prices.
The Commission plans to publish in early spring the amount of gas that European countries plan to buy together, to attract offers from suppliers.
EU countries must ensure that their local companies participate in aggregating gas demand with volumes equal to 15% of the gas needed to fill the country’s storage facilities to 90% of their capacity.
Across the EU, the 15% requirement equates to about 13.5 billion cubic meters of gas, a small part of the bloc’s total gas imports, which amounted to 338 billion cubic meters in 2021, according to Eurostat data.
This article is originally published on es-us.noticias.yahoo.com
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