Course Review

UK Gas Market Introduction course review

The Energy Training Network launched its first public training course under its own name on 9^th July 2003. After many years of training delegates in-house and speaking at public courses run by other companies the Energy Training Network decided to present The UK Gas Market Introduction to the world and met with resounding success.

Being new to the energy industry myself, I was privileged to be present on that momentous day. Fifteen delegates joined me from companies such as Centrica, Interconnector, UKOOA, BHP Billiton and BG Group, to name but a few and we went through six excellent slide presentations, being able to make notes in our colour course books on the relevant slides and have a copy of the slides saved for us on an accompanying CD.

During the day we looked at the physical market, commercial gas market, the Network Code, gas trading and emerging trends in the UK gas market. Our lecturers Mike, Nick and David drew on their wealth of experience to supply us with knowledge of this exciting and rapidly changing market over the course of the day.

Over the last few years as this course has continue to run there have been many changes to various aspects of this industry. Slides are checked every time and rewritten as required to present up-to-date information.

We went through step by step what gas is, how it is measured and how it fits in a global context. We looked at where it came from, how we produce it and store it. The problems of supply/demand matching and how to predict that demand on a seasonal basis. We talked about types of players, the shippers, suppliers, transporters, market operators and brokers. There was a whole session on the Network Code and how that fits, this was a taster really for the network code course which follows on nicely from this course.

Emerging trends took us through distribution network disposals, security of supply, gas prices and market liberalisation in Europe and how that affects us.

On the whole a great day, with excellent food at lunch time and a time to network as well as chat to the lecturers. There was always an opportunity for questions and discussion over sticky topics.

For more information on this course visit www.mjmenergy.com/UKGas.htm.