How did Montel-Foreks begin?
As the Turkish energy market has grown, market players have required ever increasing amounts of data. Historically, the Transmission System Operator and Energy Market Regulatory Authority published some data, but this was far from regular, meaning market participants struggled to get a consistent view of what was going on. Ultimately, this meant a situation where there was very little transparency in the marketplace, despite growing levels of interest.
People who now use Montel-Foreks were (back then) spending hours in the mornings to gather irregular and unstandardized data from various websites manually. Clearly, there was an obvious need of a service to provide all data from one reliable place.
Initially, it was the Chair of the Energy Trading Association, Mustafa Karahan’s idea to gather Montel and Foreks together to offer this kind of a service. Once the parties met, the joint venture grew naturally as both businesses found collaborating easy.
Why is the service aimed at a specific part of the world?
The Turkish market is very unique due to its cultural and geographical position as the meeting point between East and West. Owing to the pivotal role the country plays in gas transit particularly, we decided Montel-Foreks should be aimed at Turkish users initially.
That said, we also cover the power, gas, coal and oil sectors from Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia, Iraq, Iran, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and other South Eastern European countries.