Larry Ruff - pipelines aren't bundles of straws

I’m talking to Larry Ruff, another giant of energy market reform. Larry worked with Bill Hogan, whom many of you enjoyed listening to on the podcast earlier in the year, on the design of the UK and New Zealand electricity markets in the 1990s but he’s probably best known as the brain behind Victoria’s gas market. He’s been watching the NZ regime with interest and recently put in an independent submission to the NZ Gas Industry Company’s Review of Transmission Access and Capacity Pricing about which he agreed to come and talk to us.

Last week, we went back in time to the origins of gas transmission to try and understand where NZ’s current access arrangements came from. This week, Larry looks at the problems that arise with point-to-point access regimes for gas transmission and the metaphor that a pipeline is like a bundle of straws.