ENG goes a step further by providing easy-to-access research upon which the analysis is built. It provides you with the entire pyramid of information, so you not only can know the story for Europe in its entirety but several different breakdowns of 21 individual countries as well. As an Internet - based product, ENG offers new levels of depth in terms of providing “the data within the data.” It also offers a tracking system for key gas contracts as well as a survey of pipeline tariffs and transit costs.

PIRA has defined regions with common infrastructure and market issues but breaks these regions down into interlocking circles of competition, rather than separate spheres of influence. There is the “PIRA Big Five”: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK. These countries hold the biggest gas markets in Europe and offer a diverse end-user base. One or two gas suppliers have dominated these countries for decades. Growth has been steady, but liberalization will change how demand grows.

Then there's also the “PIRA Pacemakers” — Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Spain, and Turkey — a group of newly emerging gas markets, which in some cases were nothing more than transit countries in the past but are now emerging as central markets of their own. PIRA also distinguishes between Northern and Southern European markets, which, while integrated through EU liberalization, are evolving quite differently. Southern Europe's future is inextricably tied to the Mediterranean market and North African suppliers; Northern Europe contends with a flood of suppliers from the North Sea. And then there's Russia's Gazprom, a single company that controls 20% of the European market. The lines continue to blur when addressing Central Europe and the Balkans, two markets where gas demand plunged a decade ago and is still a good 20 BCM/Y lower than a decade ago. The market is there, but who will supply it and will it be at prices that end-users in developing countries can afford? 

Analytical Framework and Service Details
PIRA takes the analytical approach of recognizing the various inter-relationships between four key factors. Understanding these fundamental issues and value drivers is critical.

1. Gauging the Fundamentals. Exports, imports, production and stock changes all affect demand, but so does gross domestic product, heating degree days and industrial production. All of these variables are woven into PIRA's demand forecast for a dozen countries in Europe on a monthly basis.
2. Marketing Issues. What's a more profitable play, buying gas at Zeebrugge or at the German border? What's the easiest way to sell Russian gas in France, directly from Gazprom, through a location swap, or from storage? What's more important to producers, establishing direct sales to end-users or maintaining the profitability of existing transmission companies in which they own stakes? Storage was completely irrelevant a few years ago; now it is a primary price setter and creator of hubs.
3. New Competition. How does gas-on-gas competition impact your market? For example, new Russian and North African gas pipelines to Europe will affect gas prices, raising them at some price points and lowering them at others — even at locations hundreds of kilometers away from the new pipes being developed in the region.
4. Supply Changes. Russia, Norway and Algeria are shifting from their traditional positions as baseload suppliers to more flexible schemes. Can they compete with private producers in the North Sea? Market control will shift away from transmission companies, but into whose hands and how will those transmission companies respond?