Doris Leblond
OGJ Correspondent
PARIS, Mar. 4 -- At a meeting of European Union Energy Ministers in Brussels Feb. 28, the Slovene presidency accepted an unbundling option proposed by Germany, France, and six other EU members. The unbundling initiative had been introduced as an alternative to the Energy Commission's two options to separate energy production from distribution networks in order to obtain a truly competitive European integrated energy market.
There will be further discussions on the matter before the end of June. France assumes the presidency of the EU July 1.
The Commission wanted the total breakup of fully vertically integrated gas and electricity utilities but proposed a complicated alternative that eight opponents rejected. It posed that ownership of production and transport networks be retained but that the assets be managed by a fully independent body.
Their third option was to set up the conditions for an "effective and efficient" dissociation between energy producers and transporters while maintaining ownership.
While France's Energy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo was celebrating "a psychological victory" because the third option had been retained for discussion, Germany's E.On AG was pulling the carpet from under the discussions by setting up a precedent for full unbundling: It was offering to sell its electricity grid to a fully independent buyer, a move rejected by German Chancellor Angela Merkel as likely to weaken the position of Germany and France.
A number of observers noted that, while it was possible to give up ownership of electricity networks, giving up ownership of gaslines would destroy the value of a company such as Gaz de France and involve questions of national security, as a company such as Gazprom is known to be ready to acquire networks that would appear on an open market.
