The new index will be based on the front month contracts on the Natural Gas Derivatives Market and all front-month trade transactions carried out at the EEX in the GASPOOL and NetConnect market areas, the exchange said.
"The members of the exchange council welcome the plans for the gas index since it has the potential to replace oil prices and other external indices in gas supply contracts and hope the EEX gas price will establish itself as a reference price," the exchange said.
EEX said that Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel supported the setting up of such an index which she expects to encourage the decoupling of gas prices from the oil price.
The introduction of the index comes as the gas industry is debating the future of long-term, oil-indexed contracts.
Although spot gas prices have on average doubled since August 2009, spot gas still remains some 23% cheaper than volumes bought under long-term, oil-indexed contracts.
The disconnect between spot gas prices and long-term, oil-indexed prices has led major gas importers to seek to renegotiate contracts with long-term suppliers such as Russia's Gazprom and Norway's Statoil.
China Chemical Weekly: http://news.chemnet.com/en/detail-1411716.html
