Abstract

By retracing the evolution of the European gas market and its financialization, this article relates the violent price hikes recorded on the Title Transfer Facility (Ttf), the European natural gas exchange, with the dramatic contraction in physical supply of the same commodity occurred before and in conjunction with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Under extremely challenging conditions and not without dramatic welfare effects on operators, consumers and governments, the market has nevertheless fulfilled its most classic function: allocating efficiently scarce resources using a price-based mechanism.