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CO2 storage opportunities and the location of coal-fired power plants are located far apart throughout Europe, suggesting the need for a region-wide CO2 pipeline network or at least a considerable number of cross-border transport pipelines. Regionally coherent policy would be needed to embed a CCS infrastructure into an evolving European electricity system. However, the current EU's CCS Directive leaves the decision to allow carbon storage on their territory to individual MSs and makes no provision for limiting local bans on CCS. Such EU policy should be reconsidered, as it could distort optimal pipeline infrastructure development and make pipeline construction more expensive. Germany, for example, is the largest emitter of CO2 in Europe, has the second largest storage capacities, and is located in the middle of Europe. A German ban on onshore storage of CO2 could not only unnecessarily increase the size of a transport network in Europe, but also the costs of building CCS infrastructure. It is worth stressing that the issue of building CCS infrastructure is a policy question that requires deliberation starting today, even if building most of the projects were likely to commence at least a decade later. Although CCS is not yet a fully established technology, steps should be taken now to set up a policy framework given the long time horizon that investment decisions in CCS infrastructure and power generation facilities would require. Moreover, the current uncertainty about the future of CCS also discourages private investment in CCS research and could thus hinder an even more efficient and effective use of this technology. As the present situation indicates, the implementation of CCS runs the risk of being deployed only in isolated cases, which would influence future energy mixes and might hamper the realization of stringent climate goals. Even if the use of renewable sources to produce energy increases in the future, coal will likely remain an important energy source for the next 20 years, particularly in Germany where nuclear power is to be phased out. In this context, CCS is a powerful option to reduce CO2 emissions to the atmosphere. Impeding the use of and research on CCS by not establishing appropriate regulations or even by prohibiting CO2 storage at this early stage, therefore, would pose the risk of losing one potentially important tool to combat climate change.

This paper provides a quantitative analysis of power relations and strategic investment in the transport system for Russian gas. First, we analyse how the architecture of the transport system determines Russia's bargaining power vis-à-vis (potential) transit countries. By applying the Shapley value as a solution for multilateral bargaining we find that competition between transit countries is of little strategic importance compared to direct Russian access to its customers in Western Europe. Second, we develop a dynamic model of strategic investment. We find that the failure to include Belarus and Ukraine into a framework for international contract enforcement resulted in underinvestment in cheap pipelines and overinvestment in expensive ones. As capacities are increased to gain leverage over transit countries, customers in Western Europe benefit in terms of lower prices and higher supply security.

This paper examines the perspectives of Russian gas exports to Western Europe and the strategic options of the CIS gas transiting countries, namely Ukraine and Belarus. The development of a new transit corridor through Belarus (the Yamal-Europe pipeline), depriving Ukraine of its former monopoly, has modified the situation profoundly. The thrust of the paper is an analysis of the strategies that Ukraine and Belarus may pursue in transiting Russian gas: non-cooperative duopoly, cooperative duopoly, and individual or collective cooperation with Russia. Using a demand function for Western European gas imports from Russia, we estimate prices and quantities for gas transit, the expected profits for Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, and the resulting import prices for Western Europe. The results indicate that Ukraine suffers a loss of several hundred million USD annually from the market entry of Belarus, Belarus has an incentive to increase its gas transit capacity to at least 56 billion cubic meters, and Russia's profits increase, in particular when it unites its gas sector with Belarus and Ukraine, a strategy pursued by Russia's Gazprom presently. For Western Europe, all scenarios indicate an increase in welfare through the new pipeline, but also an increasing importance of gas imports from Russia.

This paper examines the perspectives of Russian gas exports to Western Europe and the strategic options of the CIS gas transiting countries, namely Ukraine and Belarus. The development of a new transit corridor through Belarus (the Yamal-Europe pipeline), depriving Ukraine of its former monopoly, has modified the situation profoundly. The thrust of the paper is an analysis of nthe strategies that Ukraine and Belarus may pursue in transiting Russian gas: non-cooperative duopoly, cooperative duopoly, and individual or collective cooperation with Russia. Using a demand function for Western European gas imports from Russia, we estimate prices and quantities for gas transit, the expected profits for Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, and the resulting import prices for Western Europe. The results indicate that Ukraine suffers a loss of several hundred million USD annually from the market entry of Belarus, Belarus has an incentive to increase its gas transit capacity to at least 56 billion cubic meters, and Russia's profits increase, in particular when it unites its gas sector with Belarus and Ukraine. For Western Europe, all scenarios indicate an increase in welfare through the new pipeline, but also an increasing importance of gas imports from Russia. ; Der Beitrag untersucht die Perspektiven russischer Gasexporte nach Westeuropa und die strategischen Optionen der Gastransitländer Ukraine und Belarus. Durch den Neu- und Ausbau eines Gastransitkorridors durch Belarus (die Jamal-Europa-Pipeline) geht die bisherige Monopolstellung der Ukraine als Transitland verloren. Ziel der Arbeit ist die Modellierung und Quantifizierung unterschiedlicher Wettbewerbsstrategien, wie das nichtkooperative Duopol, das kooperative Duopol, oder die individuelle bzw. kollektive Kooperation der Transitländer mit Russland. Hierfür werden Exportpreise und -mengen sowie die resultierenden Gewinne der Spieler geschätzt. Durch den Markteintritt von Belarus ergeben sich erhebliche Verluste für die Ukraine, während sich Belarus mit einem Ausbau seiner Kapazitäten auf 56 Mrd. m3 noch besser stellt. Russlands Gewinne steigen insbesondere durch die vertikale Integration der belarussischen und ukrainischen Gassektoren. Für Westeuropa legen die Ergebnisse erhebliche Wohlfahrtsgewinne durch den Pipelineausbau nahe, gleichzeitig aber auch eine gestiegene Abhängigkeit von Gasimporten aus Russland.

This paper looks into various models that address strategic behavior in the supply of gas by the Mexican monopoly Pemex. The paper has three very strong technical results. First, the netback pricing rule for the price of domestic natural gas (based on a Houston benchmark price) leads to discontinuities in Pemex's revenue function. Second, having Pemex pay for the gas it uses and the gas it flares increases the value of the Lagrange multiplier associated with the gas processing constraint. Third, if the gas processing constraint is binding, having Pemex pay for the gas it uses and flares does not change the short run optimal solution for the optimization problem, so it will have no impact on short-run behavior. These results imply three clear policy recommendations. The first is that the arbitrage point be fixed by the amount of gas Pemex has the potential to supply in the absence of processing and gathering constraints. The second is that Pemex be charged for the gas it uses in production and the gas it flares. The third is that investment in gas processing and pipeline should be in a separate account from other Pemex investment.

Due to the increasing European import dependency, significant additional natural gas volumes will be required. In addition to the Nord Stream pipeline, the Nabucco and South Stream pipeline are projects planned for the next decade to provide further gas supplies to the European market. As one of the European Union's energy policies' foci is security of supply, the question can be raised if and how these projects contribute to this objective not only in terms of diversification but also in case of supply disruptions such as occurred in 2009 during the Russia-Ukraine gas crisis. This paper discusses the impact of these two major gas import pipeline projects on the South-Eastern Europe gas supply and analyzes their effects on gas flows and marginal cost prices in general and in case of gas supply disruptions via Ukraine in a model-based analysis with the European natural gas infrastructure and dispatch model TIGER.