It is an advantage if such incidents as the Wingas/ Gazprom issue happen during E-World, the largest German energy fair. News travels fast when such a dense number of industry representatives come together. In principle it has been expected for weeks or months that something is going to happen with Wingas. Budgets were cut or cancelled and first projects abandoned. Therefore, it was a kind of pre-warning when it became known on Monday (one day before E-World) that Mr Möhring had to go to Moscow on short notice. He gave a speech at a conference for senior managers in Essen, a kind of warm up for the EWorld event. On Tuesday, it was heard at the fair that for the next day all senior managers had to come to Kassel. All sales directors had to cancel or remove their E-World meetings. On Wednesday evening, first rumours were spread about the sacking of the Wingas managing board. According to someone who might have known more about it, Mr Möhring flew directly from Moscow to Hamburg where he lives. On Thursday morning at the latest, the speculations were growing: Kassel and London were to be shut down completely, some are thought to have heard.
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- Issue title:
Gazprom in Northwest Europe
- Publication date:
- 06.03.2018
- In this issue:
In principle, it was a nice but boring E-world without exciting topics. However, suddenly rumours circulated that Gazprom had sacked Ludwig Möhring, the Wingas managing director in charge of sales. That was, of course, the end of all boredom and the start of many discussions. The Gazprom decision was part of a bigger personnel and organisational reshuffling process. In the topic of the month, I try to explain the whole story. The problem that arises even for the staff of the group is that decisions are made suddenly and communicated either late, inappropriately or not at all. In that case, a first Wingas assembly of employees took place days after the decision, but didn‘t really clarify much.
For years, Gas trading in the EEX Group has been riding a strong upward trend. The success story started with the transfer of the EEX trading to the PEGAS platform of the French EEX subsidiary Powernext on January 1, 2015. Since then, the number of the markets that can be traded on the platform has increased. The product variety is also increasing and spread trading is possible between many markets. This led to soaring volumes in the spot and forward market. At least in the spot market PEGAS has gained substantial market shares from brokers. According to ener|gate Gasmarkt’s own statistics, the PEGAS market share in the Day Ahead market for the two German hubs has increased since 2015 from 24 to almost 50 per cent. For the TTF, a market share of around 40 per cent was achieved.
One correction before the further proceedings: ener|gate Gasmarkt reported about new PEGAS products. One mistake was made in the report: Options were not launched on January 18 but are scheduled to be launched at the end of February. Back to the story: Since the beginning of 2015, Egbert Laege is in charge of the gas trading business in the EEX executive board.
ener|gate Gasmarkt talked with Mr Laege about option trading but also about other developments and the future plans of the group for gas trading. ener|gate Gasmarkt: Mr Laege, are there any developments with which you are not satisfied?
Mr Laege: Well, we are completely happy! We managed to establish PEGAS as the leading platform in the spot market. The increasing volumes and the increasing market share shows this sucess But if we want to be a leading platform we must also feel a higher awareness for PEGAS. This is happening! We are involved in all discussions, like market merger plans or solutions for special market problems in the provision of flexibility and system control energy. Take France as an example, where special solutions for congestion management after the merger of PEG Nord and TRS are needed. With our involvement we are pushing market developments. We are on a good track but there is still room for improvement. We are working on it.
ener|gate Gasmarkt: What have the success factors been for PEGAS over the last three years?
Mr Laege: We see ourselves as experts with one foot in the physical commodity business and one foot in the exchange business...
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