The pooling of natural gas purchases

When consumers of natural gas and electricity, industries, hospitals, communities, agricultural cooperatives, group together with a view to renewing their individual natural gas supply contracts, they have in principle the possibility of pooling the tender procedure, the supply, or both simultaneously.

Zelya organizes the pooling of multi-site and company gas purchases

Management of readings | Aggregation of consumptions

Profile analysis | Coverage strategies | Pre-negotiations & Supplier selection 

Analysis of the specifications | Competition 

Analysis and discussion of offers | Assistance in negotiations and signing of multi-site contracts 

Pooling of the procedure

Pooling the tender procedure and competing suppliers allows the sharing of costs related to competition and gains in renegotiating existing contracts, as long as the same supplier is asked to satisfy several or all individual contracts. Pooling the procedure is thus a consumption aggregation and a request for aggregated pricing to obtain a price applicable to all individual contracts. This pooling is particularly interesting when facing suppliers that do not position themselves below an annual minimum quantity: such suppliers would not respond to small consumers who would ask them for a quote for their consumption alone.

Pooling of the supply

The pooling of the supply, which can be sought and achieved whether or not the procedure is also pooled, consists in substituting a few common supply contracts for individual supply contracts, i.e. signed by the same legal entity. The pooling of supply is therefore a purchasing aggregation.

In the most advanced case, the members of the group create a purchasing centre which signs the global supply contract: such an entity replaces the different individual contracts.

Which pooling to choose?

Pooling the procedure and pooling the supply are therefore two distinct but complementary notions. In some cases, consumers create a common structure that requests a single quote (= pooling of the procedure), towards which they transfer all their contracts (= pooling of the supply). In such a case, this structure carries out the functions of a purchasing centre.

In both cases of pooling, nothing prevents partially aggregating individual consumers: consumption sites can be grouped (or aggregated) into subsets, provided they have similar or opposite characteristics. Their characteristics thus reinforce, by aggregation, the scale effect in the first case, or the smoothing effect in the second.

The synergies, which result in savings on the overall or individual bill, do not intrinsically result from pooling, but in reality from the way in which individual contracts are aggregated (what are the subsets?). It might even be that by aggregating all contracts (so there are no subsets), we deprive ourselves of certain synergies.

Our services

As part of the pooling of your natural gas purchases, Zelya Energy assists you with:

• finalizing a database on the various consumption sites of your group;
• analyzing the consumption profiles of your sites from invoices and readings;
• advising on the level of pooling and grouping of consumption sites, taking into account the location in balancing areas;
• developing one or more specifications;
• launching and supervising the tender with potential suppliers;
• analyze the offers and quotations submitted;
• secure your negotiations;
• approve your consumption data in a mobile and internet application.