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This dissertation consists of three chapters; each models competition in natural gas markets. These models provide insight into interactions between changes in market conditions/policies and market players’ strategic behavior. In all three chapters, we apply our models to a natural gas trade network formed by using BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2010 major trade flows. In the first chapter, we develop a model for the world natural gas market where buyers and sellers are connected by a trading network. Each natural gas producer is a Cournot player with a fixed supply capacity. Each of them is also connected to a unique set of importing markets. We show that this constrained noncooperative Cournot game is a potential game and its potential function has a unique maximizer. In the scenario analysis, we find that any exogenous change affecting Europe also has an effect in the Asia Pacific. The reason is that two big producers, Russia and the Middle East, are connected to both markets. We also find that a collusive agreement between Russia and the Middle East leads them to specialize in supply to markets based on their marginal costs of exporting natural gas. The second chapter is devoted to analyzing the impacts of North American shale gas on the world natural gas market. To better represent the North American natural gas market, this chapter also allows for perfect competition in that market. We find that North America exports natural gas when its supply curve is highly elastic and hence the domestic price impact of its exports is very small. Even so, the price impacts on the importing markets are substantial. We also find that shale gas development in North America decreases dominant producers’ market power elsewhere in the world and hence decreases the incentive of any parties to form a natural gas cartel. In the third chapter, we relax the assumption of fixed supply capacities and allow for natural gas producers to invest in their supply capacities. We assume a two period model with no uncertainty and show that there is a unique Cournot-Nash equilibrium and the open-loop Cournot-Nash equilibrium and closed-loop Cournot-Nash equilibrium investments coincide.

Submitted by Diego Piotto (dpiotto@gmail.com) on 2017-08-28T18:15:31Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Diego Piotto_Final.pdf: 1609250 bytes, checksum: 9c276b0e7f775c9cb47d057087a1da5a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Joana Martorini (joana.martorini@fgv.br) on 2017-08-28T18:21:48Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Diego Piotto_Final.pdf: 1609250 bytes, checksum: 9c276b0e7f775c9cb47d057087a1da5a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-08-29T12:42:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Diego Piotto_Final.pdf: 1609250 bytes, checksum: 9c276b0e7f775c9cb47d057087a1da5a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-08-14 / O sistema elétrico brasileiro sofreu grandes mudanças em sua regulação nas últimas décadas no intuito de aumentar a eficiência de mercado baseando-se no incentivo a competição entre os agentes. O incentivo a entrada de geradores privados tem gerado resultados significativos a competição e tem provocado uma reestruturação que tem modificado a operação antes totalmente centralizada para modelos descentralizados que estimulam a competição entre agentes. O objetivo deste trabalho é, partir do artigo de Barroso Et al. (2001), onde é obtido a ação de poder de mercado em sistemas hidrotérmicos para ambiente competitivo e de mínimo custo tanto para modelo estático como modelo dinâmico, desenvolver o modelo de comportamento dos agentes para situações de colusão entre agentes price makers tanto para o modelo estático como para o dinâmico. Além disso obter as taxas de juros limites para o desvio da colusão. Será demostrado que em mercados com poucos agentes, o benefício de se desviar da colusão somente ocorre para altas taxas de desconto. Com a inclusão de maior quantidade de agentes, identifica-se que o incentivo ao desvio da colusão possui taxas descrentes. Será apresentado que para modelos acoplados no tempo o comportamento de um possível conluio fará com que os agentes sustentem o preço spot mais elevado, mesmo em períodos de baixa afluência. / The Brazilian electrical system has undergone great changes in its regulation in the last decades in order to increase the efficiency of the market based on the incentive to the competition among the agents. The incentive to the entry of private generators has generated significant results the competition and has caused a restructuring that has modified the operation before totally centralized to decentralized models that stimulate the competition between agents. The objective of this work is to analyze the market power in hydrothermal systems that is, based on thermal and hydroelectric generation, using low cost models for centralized systems and Nash Cournot model for decentralized systems both decoupled in time in order to obtain the dispatch great. The analysis extends to the strategic behavior of the agents for time coupled systems using low cost models for centralized systems and Nash Cournot model using stochastic programming resources to determine the optimal dispatch of the agents of the market. It has been shown that in markets with few agents, the benefit of diverting from collusion only occurs at high discount rates. With the inclusion of a greater number of agents, it is identified that the incentive to the deviation of collusion has unbelievable rates. It will be shown that for time-coupled models the behavior of a possible collusion will cause the agents to sustain the higher spot price, even in periods of low affluence.