SPOTLIGHT ON POWER TRADING

STRATEGIC POWER TRADING SESSION
Wednesday 24 March
11:00 – 12:30
 
Moderator: Christopher de Vere Walker – Managing Director, DVW Group
 
Participants: Speakers from Sovet Rynka, ATS, RTS, power exchange Arena, major generating and consuming companies.
 
A ‘must attend’ session and open discussion that promises to become a platform for the launch of new perspectives on power trading in Russia.
 
The background
 
The Sayano-Shushinskaya hydro explosion on August 17th, 2009 has blasted open the discussion of market risk for both generators and consumers. Until summer 2009, the focus had been solely on the mechanisms to support the anticipated growth of energy consumption, and the obligations of the newly formed companies to put new capacity on line. But now, almost overnight, price risk, volumetric risk and regulatory risks have become top of generators and consumers’ agenda. The absence of standard instruments and practices to hedge such risks has created a perfect environment for the new market players to emerge and offer hedging solutions to the exposure of the day-ahead and balancing market.
 
The launch of the power derivatives market in addition, has transformed the power trading from purely hedging to revenue driven business. This in itself has drawn a new cast of players, such as professional power trading houses, brokerages and banks who have been waiting to embark on Russia’s power market since the start of restructuring.
 
Questions to be answered:

• How will the power exchange work and how will it hedge the risks of the physical players?

• How does RTS plan to handle credit risk in an already heavily indebted power sector?

• Power trading as a revenue driven business – the prospect of power trading for trading houses,   brokers and banks
  
• Capacity trading: what is the long-term hedging strategy?
  
• What new trading products are coming to Russia to hedge price and volumetric risks (spark and dark    spreads, fixed price PPAs, tolling arrangements, emissions trading)?
  
• What are the power market 2010-2012 prospects?

• What are the systems and procedures to protect against regulatory risk, power price risk and   credit risk?

To address these issues and stimulate open debate and discussion among attendees and a select panel of experts from the international and Russian financial and energy sectors, Russia Power presents the Strategic Power Trading session. This is a unique opportunity for power sector consumers and generators, commodity trading houses and brokerages, and financial institutions such as banks and investment houses, to explore the new prospects of power trading and risk hedging in Russia.
 
The Strategic Power Trading session is chaired by Christopher de Vere Walker, who has been advising trading opportunities in Russia since 2004 and has shared his considerable power trading experience with the market architects ever since.