The bumpy road to a new European gas price benchmark

OPINION: European Union efforts to establish a new liquefied natural gas-based pricing benchmark for the bloc have got off to a sticky start.

After months of debate and political wrangling, the EU’s Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) was given the task of managing the bloc’s response to the price volatility that followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and disruption to Gazprom's gas flows to the continent.

Until now, participants in the European liquefied gas market have relied heavily on the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF), the dominant pricing benchmark for natural gas in Europe, to price against.