PRESS RELEASE February 4th, 2008

January 2008 – Registered records, favourable premises for keeping positive trends from last year

(Bucharest, February 4th 2008) January 2008 ends with results that constitute a strong starting point in the new year: records of daily participation, daily and monthly records concerning the physical and financial volumes on the day-ahead market.
The market share of deliveries for January based trades in the day ahead market reached 10.97% of the consumption, on the basis of a record hourly average volume of 768 MW/h, while the quantities delivered on the basis of the transactions on the centralized bilateral contracts market represents the maximum of the monthly shares established until now, respectively 18.12% of consumption. Together, the two markets have insured a market transparency of almost 30%, more than half of the trades on the wholesale competitive market. If to the hereto market share we add the insured trades through the balancing market, we can assert that more than one third of the electricity consumption in Romania is transparently traded and in a competitive approach.
Using the trading place offered by OPCOM, electricity suppliers for end consumers assure the achievement of mandatory certificates acquisition quota for 2007.

Day-Ahead Market

Due to an intense participation to the trading process, the electricity volume traded in January on day-ahead market and its market share have been increased. The daily and monthly records in January announce a year with a continuous increasing trend of DAM trades’ share in the competitive market:

• On the background of the increased interest for trading, constantly displayed during this month, the maximum participation level on DAM of 59 participants submitting offers was consecutively reached on 8-9 and 22 January. 
• It has been registered the highest hourly average volume of electricity traded since the launching of the new mechanisms: 768 MWh/h, at an average price of  56.51 Euro/MWh.
• There have been concluded trades in all the hourly intervals of the month. The hourly traded volumes fluctuated between 406 MWh/h and 1068 MWh/h, being registered over 25 hourly values trades exceeding 1,000 MWh/h.
• The share represented by this month`s trades in the forecasted domestic consumption was of 10.97%, with almost 39% higher than in January 2007.
• The maximum value of the day-ahead market trades was reached on January 9th: 4.859.294,76 Lei (1,357,420.74 Euro.

The traded electricity value was of 32,909,335.97 Euro, almost double than the traded value concluded in the same period of 2007 (namely  with 96% higher).

Centralized Market for Bilateral Contracts  (CMBC)

The volume traded during this month represents 285,500 MWh, the prices of the assigned contracts were situated between 36.08 Euro/MWh – 49.08 Euro/MWh) in accordance with the delivery terms, off peak or base load contracts, respectively.
During January 2008, according with the contracts assigned on CMBC, a quantity representing 18.12 % from the national consumption was delivered and the related average price was 46.54 Euro/MWh. The share of the annual volume traded until present, for deliveries during 2008, represents 14.70% of the forecasted consumption.

Centralized Market for Green Certificates 

Following to the auction held on January on Centralized Market for Green Certificates (CMGC) a number of 21,548 certificates were traded at an average price of 42 Euro/certificate.

• Related to the number of green certificates issued for 2007, the number of the green certificates traded during the period March – December on CMGC, represents approximately 84.79 %.
• The number of the green certificates referred to the mandatory quota (adjusted by the ANRE Order 63/2007) represents 97.57%.

Using OPCOM products the participants contributed this month to the transparent trading of a quantity of 1.414.388 MWh electricity that is almost 30% from consumption and already was contracted for the rest of 2008 a quantity of  7.046.592 MWh.

PRESS RELEASE 04.02.2008