The European Union's (EU) energy agency launched a new price determination application for liquefied natural gas (LNG) on Thursday as part of the bloc's gas market correction mechanism.
The gas market correction mechanism was established on Dec. 22, 2022, by the EU to protect EU citizens and the economy against excessively high energy prices.
Under the mechanism, the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) calculates a daily reference price for LNG by taking global LNG price levels as a reference.
On Feb. 1, ACER began publishing the daily reference LNG price.
ACER's first LNG daily reference price on Feb. 1 was €55.21 per megawatt-hour. On the same day, the price level at TTF, the Netherlands-based virtual natural gas trading point with the deepest depth in Europe, closed at €59.50, marking a price difference of about €4.
ACER will publish a new reference price every weekday.
As part of its efforts to stabilize natural gas prices within the EU markets, the bloc also launched a price cap mechanism.
The price cap will be triggered as part of the gas market correction mechanism on Feb. 15 onward if the benchmark price exceeds €180 per megawatt-hour for three days and is €35 per megawatt-hour higher than the LNG reference price.
Reporting by Ata Ufuk Seker in Brussels
Writing by Zeynep Beyza Kilic
Anadolu Agency
energy@aa.com.tr