• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.18-24
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• 1998

This paper attempts to improve domestic natural gas pricing system, thereby optimizing social welfare. This is done by deriving theoretical frameworks of natural gas pricing, which make use of both Ramsey component pricing rule and Efficient component pricing rule based on the theory of marginal cost. Allocative efficiency and social welfare between gas prices derived from the three pricing mechanism, present Cost-based pricing, Ramsey component pricing rule and Efficient component pricing rule, are analysed and compared in the case study. For the city gas, allocative efficiency of Cost-based pricing is higher than that of Ramsey component pricing rule and Efficient component pricing rule. In contrast, for the natural gas consumed for power generation, allocative efficiency of Cost-based pricing is lower than the other two pricing systems. It also turns out that social welfare is improved by the prices driven from Ramsey component pricing rule and Efficient component pricing rule rather than present Cost-based pricing.

• Anayses & Alternatives
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.77-105
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• 2021

Natural gas consumption in Asia is growing at fast tempo because of various factors such as economic growth in the region, urbanization, coal-to-gas switch at power and industry sector. Due to geographical characteristics and lack of international pipeline connections between countries in the continent, majority of natural gas exported to Asian consumers is transported by tankers on the sea in the form of liquefied natural gas. As Asian market is the most lucrative market with the fastest demand growth, the competitions between LNG sellers for market share in Asian market are strengthening. The competitions accelerated, especially after the introduction of large volume of incremental supply into the market by new exporters from the U.S., Australia, and Russia. Cheniere Energy, the first exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the lower 48 states of U.S. has not adopted the traditional price formation mechanism and business model. Traditionally, prices of long-term LNG contracts have been indexed to the price of competing fuels, such as crude oil. The company adopted a pricing mechanism and business model based on a cost-plus system. Cheniere Energy opted for the safer and the risk-free pricing system, that annually guarantees a fixed amount of revenue to the seller. The company earns the same amount of money, regardless of natural gas price dynamics in the domestic and international market, but possibly with less revenue. However, by introducing and successfully implementing the safer and risk- free business model, Cheniere Energy, a company of a relatively smaller size in comparison with major oil and gas companies, became an example to other smaller-sized companies in the U.S. The company's business model demonstrated how to enter and operate LNG business amid increasing competitions among sellers in the U.S. and international market.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.751-774
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• 2008

In this paper, we examine the institutional prices differences in the electricity and natural gas industries using unbalanced panel data from 1999 to 2001. The changing market structures following deregulation in both markets allow us to examine the institutional prices differences by ownership type, market structure and merger activities. Estimating the reduced form, after controlling both intrinsic characteristic (marginal costs) and external factors (demand), allows us to identify the extent to which specific factors are correlated with the price. Furthermore it allows us to identify systematic institutional price differences in both electricity and natural gas markets. Our estimation results suggest that the private firms in electricity markets are associated with higher prices than public firms after controlling for demand and cost. We further find that dual-product firms in the natural gas industry and the electricity industry are associated with lower rates than single product firms. These results provide a weak evidence of economies of scope in the dual-product firms. Our results finally suggest that merger activities in natural gas markets are associated with higher rates.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.93-104
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• 2024

China is playing more predominant role in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) market worldwide and LNG import price is subject to various factors both at home and abroad. Nevertheless, previous studies rarely heed a multiple of factors. A time-varying parameter factor augmented vector auto-regression (TVP-FAVAR) model is adopted to discover the determinants of China's LNG import price and their dynamic impacts from January 2012 to December 2021. According to the findings, market fundamentals have a greater impact on the import price of natural gas in China than overall economic demand, financial considerations, and world oil prices. The primary determinants include domestic gas consumption, consumer confidence and other demand-side information. Then, there are diverse and time-varying spillover effects of the four common determinants on the volatility of China's LNG import price at different intervals and time nodes. The price volatility is more sensitive and long-lasting to domestic natural gas pricing reform than other negative shocks such as the Sino-US trade war and the COVID-19 pandemic. The results in this study further proves the importance of domestic natural gas market liberalization. China ought to do more to support the further marketization of natural gas prices while working harder to guarantee natural gas supplies.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.259-266
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• 2015

Among many energy resources, natural gas has recently received a remarkable amount of attention, particularly from the electrical generation industry. This is in part due to increasing shale gas production, providing an environment-friendly fossil fuel, and high risk of nuclear power. Because South Korea, the world's second largest LNG importing nation after Japan, has no international natural gas pipelines and relies on imports in the form of LNG, the natural gas has been traditionally procured by long term LNG contracts at relatively high price. Thus, there is a need of developing an Asian LNG trading hub, where LNG can be traded at more competitive spot prices. In a natural gas spot market, the amount of natural gas to be bought should be carefully determined considering a limited storage capacity and future pricing dynamics. In this work, the problem to find the optimal amount of natural gas in a spot market is formulated as a Markov decision process (MDP) in risk neutral environment and the optimal base stock policy which depends on a stage and price is established. Taking into account price and demand uncertainties, the basestock target levels are simply approximated from dynamic programming. The simulation results show that the basestock policy can be one of effective ways for procurement of LNG in a spot market.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.47-89
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• 2020

We introduce a simple theoretical model to analyze the welfare impact of a competition policy in the natural gas market in South Korea. An incumbent monopolistic firm currently owns essential facilities, but the competition policy mandates that the firm provide open access to any entrant firm, charging an access fee. When no regulation is imposed on the fee pricing, this policy increases social welfare as well as the profit of the incumbent firm. When the pricing is regulated, however, social welfare depends on whether there is information asymmetry between the government and the firm regarding the operating cost of the facilities. If the government has complete information, social welfare can be maximized by choosing the optimal prices. Otherwise, the government has to set the prices based on the information that the firm delivers. We formulate a Bayesian game to analyze this case and identify a set of perfect Bayesian equilibria to compare social welfare.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.36-41
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• 2014

The world's overall need for natural gas (NG) has been growing up fast, especially in the residential sector. The better the estimation of residential NG consumption (RNGC) distribution, the better decision-making for a residential NG policy such as pricing, demand estimation, management options and so on. Approximating the distribution of RNGC is complicated by zero observations in the sample. To deal with the zero observations by allowing a point mass at zero, a mixture model of RNGC distributions is proposed and applied. The RNGC distribution is specified as a mixture of two distributions, one with a point mass at zero and the other with full support on the positive half of the real line. The model is empirically verified for household RNGC survey data collected in Korea. The mixture model can easily capture the common bimodality feature of the RNGC distribution. In addition, when covariates were added to the model, it was found that the probability that a household has non-expenditure significantly varies with some variables. Finally, the goodness-of-fit test suggests that the data are well represented by the mixture model.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.799-826
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• 2006

Combining recent advances in causal flows with time series analysis, relationships among eight North American natural gas spot market prices are examined. Results indicate that price discovery tends to occur in excess demand regions and move to excess supply regions. Across North America, the U.S. Midwest region represented by Chicago spot market is the most important market for price discovery. The Ellisburg-Leidy Hub in Pennsylvania is important in price discovery, especially for markets in the eastern two-thirds of the U.S. Malin Hub in Oregon is important for the western markets including the AECO Hub in Alberta, Canada.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Energy Engineering kosee Conference
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• 1993.05a
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• pp.101-105
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• 1993

국내 천연가스 공급가격을 산정하기 위해 천연가스 가격책정 모형을 이용하여 한국가스공사 공급가격과 도시가스회사 공급가격을 구하고 도출된 결과를 분석하였다. 분석결과에 의하면 LNG를 전량 수입하는 국내 상황에서 천연가스가격은 외부조건과 기술여건에 상당히 민감하다는 것을 알 수 있었다. 또한 모형에서 구한 가격을 현행 소비자가격과 비교하였을 때 모형에 의해서 도출된 가격이 다소 높이 책정되었으며, Peak 기간과 Off Peak 기간에 뚜렷한 가격격차를 나타내었다.

• Journal of Energy Engineering
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.166-173
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• 1999

본 연구는 램지가격결정방식과 효율적요소가격결정방식을 이용하여 향후 국내 가스산업의 배관망공동이용시 발전용 천연가스의 가격 및 이용료 수준을 파악할 수 있는 천연가스 가격 결정의 이론적 모형을 도출하였다. 또한 사례분석을 통하여 램지가격결정방식(RCPR)과 효율적요소가격결정방식(ECPR)하에서 도출된 최적 가격 및 최적 이용료를 비교·분석하였고 결정변수들이 가격과 이용료에 미치는 영향에 대해서 분석하였다. 그 결과 RCPR에 의한 최적 이용료는 쿠르노 불완전 경쟁하에서 한계직접비용 보다 낮게 도출된데 반해서 ECPR에서는 한계직접비용보다 높게 도출됨으로써 가격결정방식에 따라 최적 이용료의 수준이 상이함을 보였다. 또한 도시가스용 및 발전용 가격은 RCPR 하에서 신규사업자 수가 증가할수록 하락하였고 이용료는 증가하여 한계비용에 접근하였다. 한편 최적 발전용 가격과 최적 이용료는 한계직접비용이 클수록 증가되었고, 역가격탄력성이 클수록 최적 발전용 가격은 증가하는 반면에 최적 이용료는 감소하였다.