EEX: Natural gas auction to be launched on 15 July 2009

The European Energy Exchange (EEX) will launch an intra-day auction on the Spot Market for Natural Gas in July 2009. The terms, such as the time and the design of the intra-day auction, were established in close co-operation with the trading participants: From 15 July 2009 EEX will hold a five-minute auction on the Natural Gas Spot Market for the GUD and NCG market areas from 2:30pm until 2:35pm on every exchange trading day. During this time window EEX will reduce the minimum lot size to 1 MW.

This measure enables the trading participants to optimise the structure of their procurement and sales portfolios. At the same time, the auction permits the concentration of liquidity and the trading participants on a fixed period of time.

EEX operates Spot and Derivatives Markets for energy and related products. With more than 200 trading participants from 21 countries it is the energy exchange in Continental Europe which boasts the biggest number of trading participants and the highest turnover. Power, natural gas and CO2 emission rights are traded both short-term on the Spot Market and long-term on the Derivatives Market with a time horizon of up to six years into the future. Furthermore, EEX offers derivatives contracts for global coal transactions. Clearing of exchange and over-the-counter transactions (OTC clearing) is provided by European Commodity Clearing AG (ECC). ECC is the clearing house of EEX and its partner exchanges.