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BECCLE and UiB’s PhD candidate Ignacio Herrera Anchustegui has been awarded the prestigious Scholar-In-Residence Program award by the Antitrust Law Section of the American Bar Association.
On Friday 11th of November Ignacio was informed that he was chosen as one of the two recipients of the Scholar-In-Residence Program award for the period 2017. This grant is awarded by the Antitrust Section of the American Bar Association to the two best applications submitted by a young non-US based scholar to carry out a research project in the field of Antitrust/Competition Law and/or Economics..
The award is a grant that Ignacio allows Ignacio to spend at least three months in Washington D.C. and to carry out a comparative study of the regulation concerning US Antitrust law. Ignacio’s research will be on issues in access to distribution networks in the electricity and natural gas sector and the essential facilities doctrine. This comparative research will be part of his postdoctoral project: “Regulating energy markets, a perspective from EEA/EU Competition and Public Procurement Law”, financed by Statoil.
“This award is an incredible opportunity for me as a young research and something I am very humbled and proud about. I certainly did not expect it! Also, it is a recognition of the high quality research we carry out at the UiB and BECCLE in the field of competition law and economics”, says Ignacio about the prize. “Thanks to this funding and extraordinary privilege I would be able to compare the US and EU systems and legislation when it comes to the regulation of energy markets. This will certainly broaden my horizons as a researcher and make my post-doctoral project more interesting in a global perspective. I am very grateful and honored for this opportunity and I hope to make the best use of it.”
As part of his trip to the US, Ignacio has been invited to participate in the ABA Annual Antitrust Meeting to be held in Washington D.C. in March, and to visit different US public institutions and scholars in US Antitrust Energy Law. In addition, he has been invited to visit the Wisconsin and Minnesota Universities to work with Professor Peter C. Carstensen and Professor Daniel J. Gifford.
Ignacio has also been accepted as a Visiting Researcher at the Georgetown University Law Center, a well-known visiting scholar program.
The research project:
Ignacio will carry out a study concerning the Antitrust Regulation of Electricity and Natural Gas Markets from an EU-US comparative perspective. This entails dealing with the regulatory means employed in the US and the EU concerning the ownership unbundling process, the prevention of third-party non-discriminatory access to the distribution networks of electricity and natural gas, and the transition from a direct government regulation to a market-based system. Furthermore, he will investigate the scope and applicability of the essential facilities doctrine, with a particular emphasis in the energy sector. His objective is to determine whether there is or should be a different approach to third-party access concerning energy distribution in comparison to general antitrust law.
If you are interested in Ignacio’s work, some of his publications are available here…