In the
last decade the EU has started to liberalise national gas markets and
regulatory reform has followed in member countries. We analyse the
basic issues concerning network and storage regulation and the
implementation of regulatory reforms in Italy. Then we try to explain
why in gas importing countries such reforms were not sufficient to
foster competition. Even regulation ex-post by the Competition
Commission has proved to be a formidable task, to the extent that
entry barriers in the market for imports depend on congestion of
transit pipelines still controlled by the incumbent. Moreover when gas
supply is characterised by long run importing contracts with take
or pay clauses, liberalisation policies lead to entry and market
segmentation without benefits for consumers. In order to foster gas to
gas competition the development of wholesale exchanges at market hubs
is then necessary. However new investments in essential facilities are
required to reach this aim. At present new investments are both
subsidised and exempted from third party access regulation for
financial reasons but we claim that the incentive to invest is
negatively affected lack of ownership unbundling.