Impact of overcontracting on spot prices on the regional gas markets

Size of the uncontracted segment thus plays an important role in price formation for natural gas as it becomes a self-sufficient factor determining the volume of demand. Overcontracting, which artificially downscales the size of demand in the uncontracted market segment, often causes a negative spread between spot and contracts price. The paper examines the role of this factor in price formation by measuring correlation between the size of the uncontracted segment and spot price formation. That relationship allows to build a regression model for spot price forecasting.