NEWS

A slide presentation “Diseno Regulatorio en Materia de Proteccion de la Competencia (Subastas)“ presented by David Harbord for the SIC’s conference Perspectivas del Derecho a la Competencia en Colombia: XX Anos del Decreto 2153 de 1992, in Cartagena Colombia, 2 August 2012. An English version is available in the Articles and Publications section of the website.

A new report “Private Investment in Wind Power in Colombia“ by David Robinson, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Alvaro Riascos, Quantil SAS, and David Harbord, Market Analysis Ltd, was published in July 2012.

The report examines the feasibility of private investment in wind power in Colombia within the existing regulatory framework. It focuses especially on the regulatory methodology for estimating the “firm energy” that wind power plants are capable of providing in Colombia to back up hydro generation during extended periods of drought (El Nino weather events). Our conclusion is that the current methodology probably underestimates wind’s firm energy contribution, and this in turn means that wind power stations receive a lower firm energy payment than they should. This is an important barrier to investment in wind power in Colombia and the report recommends that the Colombian Government reconsider their methodology for estimating the firm energy capacity of wind power and of other (non hydro) sources of renewable power.

The report was commissioned by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Latin America Prosperity Fund and builds on previous work on this topic funded by the World Bank.

A series of reports by Market Analysis and the Brattle Group, prepared for the Colombian Commission for the Regulation of Energy and Gas (CREG), on gas market auction and secondary market design are now available on the Publications/Reports and Submissions section of our website.

In January 2011, Market Analysis, in collaboration with the Brattle Group, was awarded two consultancy contracts by the CREG. One of the contracts was to design and implement auctions for the Colombian upstream gas market. A second contract involved making detailed recommendations for introducing open and transparent long-term and short-term secondary markets for gas and transport contracts.

A third contract for standardizing gas supply and transport contracts in Colombia was awarded to Dr. Paul Milgrom of Auctionomics in collaboration with FTI Consulting.

An article entitled “The BAT/Protabaco Merger: Unilateral Effects, Tacit Collusion and Multimarket Oligopoly“ by David Harbord and Alvaro Riascos was published in the European Competition Law Review, Vol. 32, Issue 11, pp. 539-542, 2011.  A Spanish version of this article appeared on the Foco Economico website on 7 June 2011 here.