The Cabinet on Wednesday designated the electricity market operator “Energy Market Operator M” SRL (OPEM) as a subsidiary of the Romanian joint stock company OPCOM, IPN reports.

OPEM will be an electricity trading platform and will operationalize intraday and day-ahead electricity markets. This will give fair price signals to the market and will subsequently allow differentiated electricity charges to be set for final customers.

Until the markets are decided, eligible producers will be entitled to both fixed price contracts and “contracts for differences”, until the Day-Ahead Market and Intraday Market are established on the OPCOM platform. The contract for differences allows for better market integration of eligible producers. In the case of a two-way contracts for differences, producers will receive payment in case of low market prices, but will have to return any surplus over the strike price in case of high electricity prices.

“This decision comes as a result of the joint efforts made by the Moldovan and Romanian authorities to strengthen and integrate the electricity markets of the two countries in order to ensure a competitive and transparent environment in the energy sector, by signing a Memorandum on December 11, 2023,” the Ministry of Energy said.