EEX launches natural gas trading incentive scheme

Leipzig, 25 January 2012

The European Energy Exchange (EEX) consistently pursues its growth strategy and reinforces the expansion of its Natural Gas Spot Market with a new incentive scheme. This model creates volume incentives for trading participants and aims at further increasing liquidity on the exchange. In 2011, the trading volume on the EEX natural gas market increased by 25 precent year-on-year, the Spot Market volume increased by 54 percent.

The liquidity incentive model will be launched on 1 February 2012 and is initially scheduled until the end of July 2012. Two volume thresholds are established for every market area (GASPOOL, NCG and TTF) and once these thresholds are reached the participants can receive a certain bonus. This bonus is paid out to the respective three most active trading participants in a given market area on a monthly basis. The programme includes all Day Ahead products for natural gas. All trading participants admitted to the Natural Gas Spot Market, except market area operators, are automatically included in the programme.

EEX applies a model for the Spot Market which has been used successfully on the Derivatives Market for Natural Gas since August 2011 and is scheduled to run until the end of March 2012. From August to December 2011, 22.5 terawatt hours (TWh) were traded on the Natural Gas Derivatives Market. Compared to the same period in the previous year (6.3 TWh) volumes more than tripled.

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