Oil, Gas & Energy Law Intelligence

Table 2. Results of J.Stern’s FLAME polls onexpected time of gas price decoupling from oilprices, 2004-2012 гг.Table 1: When do you expect European long term contract gasprices will become decoupled from oil and determined by spotand futures prices? (% of total)Year of Conference poll 2004 2005 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012Before end 2010 24 15 9 4 4 7 4Before end 2015 36 15 22 20 20 24 28After 2015 15 39 43 44 51 45 53Never 24 31 29 32 25 24 14Source: J.Stern. “Continental European Long-Term Gas Contracts: is a transition away from oil product-linkedpricing inevitable and imminent?”, OIES, NG34, September 2009, p.5; Ibid. “Gas Price Formation in Europe:rationale and next steps”, GMT, 8 October 2010; and also the data kindly provided personally by J.Stern to the9authorA.Konoplyanik, CEC vs Gazprom(Table 2. Results of J. Stern’s FLAME polls on expected time of gas pricedecoupling from oil prices, 2004-2012 гг.)5.5 S‐curve within two investment pricesThe other variant of hybrid indexation might also be possible to consider: the use ofthe so-called S-curve mechanism. I mean the introduction of the upper and lower limitsfor fluctuations of gas prices (corresponding to the maximum and minimum investmentprices in terminology of this article and as reflected at Figure 3) within LTGEC pricingmechanism in conditions when the price itself might reflect spot quotations within anyspecific regional area, where the end-use customers of the given supplier are located.The upper investment price level corresponds to NBRV and it shall be the maximumacceptable price for the consumer (and the minimum price among competitive suppliesavailable to him). It should be not higher than the lowest NBRV level from available48