1 January 2020 marked the opening of the Finnish gas market to competition and the start of Gasgrid Finland Oy’s operations. Gas sales has now been unbundled from the gas transmission network. Gasgrid Finland, which has been separated from the state-owned energy company Gasum Oy, has system responsibility for the entire Finnish gas transmission network.
The pipeline gas market that is open for competition is based on the Natural Gas Market Act, which entered into force in 2018 and states that gas transmission and energy sales must be unbundled. Gas import and wholesale is now possible for all operators that have registered as market participants. Finland’s open gas market is of interest to both Finnish and international operators.
Gas can be imported to the Finnish gas transmission network from Russia as usual, and additionally the bidirectional Balticconnector pipeline enables transmitting gas between Finland and Estonia. Besides these, also biogas is fed into the network.
“As a new transmission system operator, we treasure the operational reliability and dependability we inherited from Gasum. The opened competition is good for Finnish gas users. It is now possible to import gas to Finland from the Baltics without a separate cross-border transmission fee, and the gas pipeline projects that will be completed in the next few years, e.g. between Lithuania and Poland, will fully connect us to the European gas infrastructure. Gas is also part of the European Commission’s new environmental programme, Green Deal, because it is a cost-efficient way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions,” says Olli Sipilä, the CEO of Gasgrid Finland.
Gas is an important raw material and fuel for the Finnish industry. For most household customers, the opening of the gas market does not make a difference because changing the gas seller requires having a metering device that can be read remotely daily.
The Ministry of Finance is responsible for the government ownership steering of Gasgrid Finland.
Further information:
Olli Sipilä, CEO, Gasgrid Finland Oy
+358 40 589 4686