Project with Scila Surveillance wins Energy Transparency Award 2011

Late Wednesday night, the winner of the Energy Transparency Award 2011 (ETA) was announced at an award ceremony organized by the Florence School of Regulation (FSR) in Brussels. The winner was “Energy Trade Data Reporting Scheme”, the EU project initiated by the Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER) and based on Scila Surveillance, the leading market monitoring system delivered by Cinnober.

The award-winning project has gained a lot of attention for its efficiency in showing how protocol data reporting and monitoring schemes could safeguard market integrity and help prevent market abuse, and was praised as “remarkable” by the independent selection committee, chaired by Dr. Jorge Vasconcelos.

Accepting the award was Walter Boltz, the CEER Vice President who initiated this pilot project. As he put it: “This project was made possible through the strong participation of traders, brokers and exchanges who provided us with data that allowed us to do dummy runs to screen, using actual data, for possible market abuse. I’m pleased to accept this award as a tribute to the many responsible stakeholder organizations that work hand in glove with the regulators in promoting transparency.”

CEER got the award for its proactive work and contribution to the conception and implementation of transparency regulation at EU scale.

“We’re of course proud to have been involved in this project that ultimately aims at securing a well-functioning European energy market, and I think this official award underlines the importance of this pilot,” said Nils-Robert Persson, executive chairman of Cinnober. “Scila Surveillance has proved its capabilities as an efficient surveillance system in a large number of different marketplaces, and this award within the energy sector demonstrates its great flexibility as a multi-asset surveillance system.”

The liberalization and integration of European markets has lead to an increase in electricity and gas trading, and the last decade has seen a substantial growth in the number of exchanges and other trading places for European energy-related products.

Within the pilot, Scila Surveillance imported and analyzed historical trade data from selected energy exchanges, brokers and traders. The objectives were to demonstrate the feasibility of an efficient and cost-effective scheme for standardized trade data collection, storage and monitoring and the development of a concept and representative examples for the analysis of trade data.

“We have been delighted to be a part of CEER's important project for improved and sophisticated reporting and monitoring of the European energy trading markets. This is an area that has impact on us all, both individuals as well as corporations,” said Mats Wilhelmsson, COO of Scila. “Scila would like to thank all involved parties, such as E-Control and CEER, for the opportunity to play a role in this very important project, and we look forward to continuing our work in the energy markets.”

The “Energy Trade Data Reporting Scheme” project was initiated by the Council of European Energy Regulators (CEER), coordinated by the Financial Services Working Group of the European Energy Regulators (ERGEG/CEER) and managed and supported by E-Control, the Austrian energy regulatory authority. For further information about the project see http://www.energyregulators.eu