Regulation of gas infrastructure expansion

The topic of this dissertation is the regulation of gas infrastructure expansion in the European Union (EU). While the gas market has been liberalised, the gas infrastructure has largely remained in the regulated domain. However, not necessarily all gas infrastructure facilities – such as gas storage facilities, LNG import terminals and certain gas transmission pipelines – need to be regulated, as there may be scope for competition. In practice, the choice of regulation of gas infrastructure expansion varies among different types of gas infrastructure facilities and across EU Member States. Based on a review of economic literature and on a series of in-depth case studies, this study explains these differences in choices of regulation from differences in policy objectives, differences in local circumstances and differences in the intrinsic characteristics of the infrastructure projects. An important conclusion is that there is potential for a larger role for competition in gas infrastructure expansion.