Lysaker, 7 December 2005 Nord Pool has received the following information from the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE): Monday afternoon, the power prices at Zealand reached NOK 14 182 per MWh. Such high prices have never before been recorded in the Nordic spot market. The average price for Zealand in week 48 was NOK 644 per MWh, which is the highest observed since January 2003. The high prices were caused by the largest power plant on Zealand being out for repair. Further, the import capacity from Sweden was considerably reduced due to bottlenecks in the Swedish power grid. In some hours, only part of the transmission capacity was used, even though the prices at Zealand were considerably higher than in Sweden. High Norwegian production contributed to a reduction in the filling level of Norwegian reservoirs of 3.0 percentage points. At the end of week 48, the filling level was 87.2 percent. However, the filling level is still 6.7 percentage points above normal, and 10.8 percentage points higher than last year. In Sweden, the filling level was 79.1 percent at the end of week 48, after a reduction of 2.5 percentage points. ------------------------------- Contact person at the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate: Nils Spjeldnæs NVE, tel: +47 2295 9274