Having considered the fact that the price per therm of gas for January 2007 (80 NBP) is something like twice the global LNG price for the same date (37p) and almost twice that of the European Oil link gas (43p) it strikes me that the UK gas market has anti-competitive elements within it
I am considering asking the Director of Fair Trading to commence a Chapter II investigation into anti-competitive behaviour in the UK gas market in particular.
Chapter ii (1998 Act) relates as follows:
Abuse of a dominant position
The Chapter II prohibition and Article 82 of the EC Treaty prohibit the abuse by one or more businesses of a dominant position in a market.
Chapter II and Article 82 give examples of specific types of conduct that are particularly likely to be considered as an abuse where the business is in a of a dominant position. These include:
imposing unfair purchase or selling prices;
limiting production, markets or technical development to the prejudice of consumers;
applying different trading conditions to equivalent transactions, thereby placing certain parties at a competitive disadvantage; and
attaching unrelated supplementary conditions to contracts.
The mechanisms used which imply limiting production .. to the prejudice of consumers both on a pipeline import basis, but also on the use of IoG seem to me to infer a Chapter II contravention is occuring. There is a more complex question as to who is responsible for this contravention, but it seems prima facie that
a) Production (import) is limited and
b) That is to the prejudice of consumers.
I am approaching a number of market participants prior to making such a reference to find out their views beforehand.
Trudiagnostic change PACE leaderboard algorithm - was in position 40, now position 44 - does it matter?
Trudiagnostic have changed the way they handle the Rejuvenation Olympics Leaderboard algorithm. The result of this initially was that I was globally no 40 and have now dropped to 44. Trudiagnostic are a US company that get samples of blood and they look at the DNA to see which parts of the DNA have methyl groups (CH3) attached to them. These modifications to DNA are called methylation markers. DunedinPACE is an algorithm which uses DNA methylation markers in white blood cells to work out how quickly or slowly someone is aging. I had three results on this. The odd thing about the results was that whilst my epigenetic age calculated from the same methylation markers was going down, the speed at which I was aging was going up. I find this somewhat counterintuitive. It is, however, I think relevant that in a global contest my approach on biochemistry which is quite different to many other people's does seem to keep up with others working in the same area. To that extent it...
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