North West European Natural Gas Hubs
• NBP (GB-1996) – National Balancing Point: Virtual trading point; _ Well established, ‘mature’ market; Third Party Access (TPA)
• ZEE (Belgium-2000): Zeebrugge Hub: Physical trading location; Huge physical throughput volumes; Prices closely linked to NBP (and priced in p/th)
• TTF (Holland-2003) -Title Transfer Facility: Closest of the Continental hubs in concept to NBP; Good TPA and growing number of participants; Successful but still only <1/10th size of NBP
• NCG (Germany-2009) – NetConnect Germany: Virtual trading point; By far the largest natural gas market in Germany; Good prompt liquidity.
• GPL (Germany-2009) – Gaspool Balancing Services Hub: Virtual trading point but operates as physical balancing platform; Aimed at users of the pipeline operators that form the service; • Used by participants as pseudo seasonal storage.
• PSV (Italy-2003) – Punto di Scambio Virtuale: Virtual trading point; Despite much early promise, has never taken off; Trading compromised by poor Italian gas market structure; Non-existant liquidity, few contracts quoted, yet alone traded!
• PEGs (France-2004) – Points d’Echange de Gaz: Virtual trading points in 3 separate zones; Only PEG Nord has any activity; More of a physical balancing tool than real trading.
• CEGH (Austria-2005) – Central European Gas Hub; Similar in construct to Zeebrugge – a physical transit point; Poor TPA and low number of participants
