How could gas be distributed if Russia stopped delivering?

Berlin, Dusseldorf The debate about who will continue to supply gas in the event of a bottleneck in the natural gas supply and who will be turned off the gas supply could soon be a thing of the past. The Federal Ministry of Economics and the responsible Federal Network Agency are now considering auctioning off the remaining gas should rationing take place.

“Price should play a role in distributing shortages,” said a senior government official. According to information from the Handelsblatt, the procedure has been under discussion for around a month, according to government circles.

The President of the Network Agency, Klaus Müller, also thinks this is conceivable: “When phasing out coal, we use an auction model to achieve the most efficient shutdown of power plants with economic incentives.” He could also imagine such incentives for the industrial sector. “The market knows better than the state where energy can be saved most efficiently,” Müller told the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung” last weekend.