ACER confirms GIE as 1st IIP fully accredited central transparency platform

GIE is the 1st fully accredited pan-European Transparency Platform for Inside Information Disclosure (IIP) by ACER. As highlighted in ACER’s Quarterly Report, GIE is one of the only IIPs offering a complete European gas market coverage. GIE is now officially listed as such on the ACER REMIT Portal.

Torben Brabo, GIE President stated: “The current evolution of gas prices proves it remains crucial to have reliable tools providing a good view on European gas market’s supply. GIE’s transparency platforms – AGSI+ and ALSI – do that. In fact, they have proven their worth as such at the occasion of previous gas crises. They are pivotal source of information and enable to monitor the market’s evolution. The data we provide is for instance used by the EC GCG (European Commission Gas Coordination Group) to monitor the security of supply.”

What is a transparency platform?
Well-known within the industry, GIE’s IIP and its other Transparency Platforms and databases are useful tools for many professionals including regulators, policymakers, analysts and journalists. Those publications are central data distribution points. They cover European storage and LNG data and offer a complete overview of current inventory status and planned or unplanned outages. GIE’s Inside Information Platform enables the effective disclosure of inside information under REMIT towards ACER and the market. GIE IIP is available at https://iip.gie.eu.

How to become an accredited IIP?
To become an accredited Inside Information Platform (IIP), organisations must fully complete ACER’s data quality and operational reliability assessment procedure. GIE was the first to complete all the steps of this challenging process in the category ‘central transparency platform’, with a pan-European data coverage. See more.

A crucial week for ACER
This week, the ACER REMIT Forum celebrates the 10th Anniversary of the Regulation on Wholesale Energy Market Integrity and Transparency (REMIT), which came into force in 2011 to support open and fair competition in the European wholesale energy markets.

Boyana Achovski, GIE Secretary General stated “This 10 years anniversary is a great occasion to re-affirm our commitment to support ACER towards a well-functioning internal European market for energy. Collaboration is essential in this transition to a net zero future. As primary representative of the European gas infrastructure operators, we have around 70 members coming from 26 European countries working and innovating with transmission, underground storage and LNG terminals. And this provides us with a good overview of what’s happening on the ground. GIE is also very active in transparency activities and publishes different maps and database every year.”

Towards a more integrated energy markets
As stated on the ACER portal: “The massive decarbonisation of the European energy system will increasingly rely on more integrated energy markets. Otherwise, the cost of the transition is likely to be much higher, endangering social acceptance. One aspect often overlooked of such further reliance on integrated energy markets is the ability to have trust in these markets, ensuring they are free of manipulation and other damaging trading behaviour. This is the contribution of REMIT, the most advanced energy market monitoring effort on the planet. As such, making sure REMIT evolves alongside energy system change in Europe is the ‘political corollary’ of relying on the further integration of energy markets across Member States to secure the objectives set at the highest levels of government.”

Background information

Source : ACER REMIT Quarterly Report, Inside Information Platforms: market coverage in the EU-27

GIE IIP – available at https://iip.gie.eu

GIE’s role under REMIT and its commitment to Transparency

Commitment to Transparency
Together with its well-recognised AGSI+ (EU Storage inventory) and ALSI (LNG inventory) Transparency Platforms, the GIE Inside Information Platform (IIP) was established on 1 January 2021 to re-affirm and expand GIE’s commitment to offering transparency to the market and industry stakeholders. The GIE Transparency Platforms will remain a focal point for security of supply and transparency towards the market, serving as a public platform for (disaggregated) operational data regarding the operation of European storage facilities and LNG terminals in a daily resolution.

GIE as reporting mechanism under REMIT
Following its contribution and cooperation with ACER in establishing the reporting mechanisms for gas infrastructure operators under REMIT, GIE established itself as both an RRM (Registered Reporting Mechanism) for REMIT Fundamental Data reporting by SSO and LSO on 7 April 2016 and as an IIP (Inside Information Platform) for UMM (Urgent Market Messaging) by TSO, SSO and LSO since 1 January 2021.

GIE provides a full range of Transparency Platforms: The IIP (Inside Information Platform), AGSI+ (Aggregated Gas Storage Inventory – established in 2007), ALSI (Aggregated LNG Storage Inventory – established in 2013) platforms are publicly accessible websites that provide daily European storage and LNG data in a daily resolution, free of charge. Filtereable data can also be downloaded or extracted via API and/or RSS feeds.

AGSI+ and ALSI have increased their data coverage throughout the years and have become standard sources of reference for market parties. GIE is continuously working on improving and extending its transparency platforms following the positive feedback from stakeholders and further initiatives in this regard are to be expected.

The GIE Transparency Platforms are open to both GIE Members and non-Member companies and are even covering non-EU countries which are not subject to REMIT reporting.

An extended & widened reporting base
An additional advantage offered by the GIE Transparency Platforms is their extended coverage of historical data and a more expansive gas market coverage. The REMIT data provision reporting window started on 7 April 2016. The data on AGSI+ and ALSI further expands this historical dataset going back to 2011 (AGSI+) or 2012 (ALSI). Additionally, the AGSI+ platform also covers data reporting by non-EU countries not falling under REMIT obligations such as Ukraine – several SSO and LSO voluntarily publish their data on AGSI+ and ALSI as a central reference point for the European gas market.