Gas Aggregation as a Regulatory Model to Promote Improved Security of Domestic Gas Supply

Abstract

This paper analyzes the role that can be played by aggregation as a regulatory model for the effective structuring of a country’s gas sector, with a focus on how aggregation has functioned and is and could be functioning, in certain countries. Aggregation, in one form or another, has enjoyed a colorful history in the regulatory shaping of several gas sectors. It has been applied successfully to the definition of nascent gas sectors in Trinidad and Tobago and the United Kingdom. Aggregation has been applied, with varying degrees of success, to the re-regulation of gas sectors in Singapore, Ghana and Tanzania; it has been threatened to be applied in Israel and Indonesia; and it has almost certainly failed in Nigeria. Aggregation is but one of a number of regulatory models that can be used to structure the gas sector within a country’s wider economy, and is the particular focus of this paper. This paper recognizes that there is no single or preferred model for the optimum regulation of the gas sector within any particular country, and different countries could take different views as to what they believe to be the most suitable regulatory model for their own particular gas sectors. This paper also recognizes that neither is there anything as simple as an agreed menu of established regulatory models for gas sector structuring, from which an appropriate selection can be made.