With the conclusion of contracts for market area cooperation and establishment of a joint company, the gas transport companies, Gasunie Deutschland, ONTRAS, WINGAS TRANSPORT and Statoil Deutschland Transport and DONG Energy Pipelines have laid the basis for merging their market areas from the 1st of October 2009. The new market area and the company that will be responsible for the balancing pool management will be called “GASPOOL”. The company is to be based in Berlin. The new cooperation is subject to approval by the responsible monopolies commission.

The new market area will create a transport and trading area for natural gas that will bring together more than 300 networks from import points to end customers virtually all over Germany.

Until 1st of October customers of Marktgebiet GASPOOL can use the cooperation platform www.marktgebiete.com.

A market area is a number of networks or sub-networks operated by various collaborating network operators in which transport customers can make flexible use of reserved capacity at entry and exit points. A market area begins at the entry points (import points, domestic sources, hubs, storage facilities or grid interconnection points between market areas) to a sub-network of wide area gas network operators and extends to the exit points serving end consumers within the market area that network hydraulics make it possible to reach.