The Spanish liquefied petroleum gas industry: Market forces, competition, and government intervention

ABSTRACT

Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is an environmentally-friendly source of energy and has an important position, particularly in the residential sector and in transport worldwide. In Spain, however, this once-promising industry now has no clear future and has to struggle to survive. In this article, we analyze the recent evolution of the Spanish LPG industry looking for, from a perspective of competitive analysis, an explanation for the current situation that the sector is going through. The analysis developed in this study shows more threats than opportunities, and highlights the uncertainty about the future of the sector if no major changes in the regulatory policy are adopted.

Keywords:

• Competition
• LPG industry
• market power
• regulation
• Spain

Notes

¹ It is important to remark that SABI database only incorporates information of different forms of trading companies (corporations, limited, worker’s cooperatives, etc.) but does not include self-employed entrepreneurs.

Additional information

Funding

The author gratefully acknowledges the financial support from the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (Project - ECO2010-21393-C03-04).