Introduction

The last ten years have seen some very high profile insolvencies in the international energy business. More recently a fear of shortages has provoked renewed interest in large scale gas storage.

Who owns the gas in store? Who stands to lose if the system operator becomes insolvent? These are not idle questions of purely intellectual interest to energy lawyers. A combination of increasing volumes held in store coupled with rising real prices means that the financial exposures arising out of a big insolvency could be significant.