A long road to deregulation

Prospex Research’s Ben Tait reports on Spain and Portugal’s progress in integrating their power markets. High ambitions for deregulation are proving difficult to achieve

At a summit in early October, the Spanish and Portuguese governments said the project to combine their electricity markets would be delayed. Originally scheduled to start on January 1, 2003, it has been pushed forward to “the first half” of next year, and implementation will not be completed until 2006. Given the pace so far and the limits to the integration plan, it wouldn’t be surprising to see more slippage and little market-moving change.

Certainly, the broad lines of the plan