Understanding The Lack Of Competition In Natural Gas Markets: The Impact Of Storage Ownership And Upstream Competition

Motivated by the failure of competition to emerge after the natural gas market in the Czech Republic was liberalized, the author explores the impact of natural gas storage ownership and upstream competition on the downstream level. The author extends standard Cournot models to understand current and likely future developments, paying particular attention to the impact of market liberalization on a country characterized by a lack of domestic production, limited foreign upstream competition, and highly concentrated (and bundled) control over an essential input in the production of the final product: gas storage.