With Britain’s own gas supplies decreasing and dependence on imported gas growing, these changes can impact on GB consumers. There are also new provisions for gas in the Third Package aimed at further liberalising the internal European gas market that impact GB. Various aspects of the regulatory regime will need to be altered to bring about the necessary changes whilst protecting the interests of consumers. For instance, new principles and rules for access to pipeline capacity must be developed alongside the design of market-based gas balancing regimes, and mechanisms to facilitate efficient investment in new infrastructure.
Ofgem is contributing to these developments in a number of ways, including:
Gas Regional Initiatives (GRI)
The development of regional gas markets is an important and practical step towards the eventual goal of a competitive, single European gas market, which led to ERGEG launching the GRI in 2006. Three regions were set up under this initiative, including one for the Northwest Europe (which GB forms part of). The overall aim of the GRI is to push forward, at a regional level, the development of gas markets through direct collaboration between regulators, industry, Member States, the European Commission and other relevant stakeholders.
In the North West gas region, we have contributed to various specific projects aimed at addressing market barriers, including on short term capacity allocation, secondary markets and investment. Ahead of new legal requirements for better information provision, we are ;eawork stream on transparency, which has resulted in significantly improved transparency for pipeline and storage infrastructure. All of these issues had been highlighted in the European Commission’s energy sector inquiry - link opens in a new browser window - in 2007.
For further up to date information, please refer to CEER's website.
European Gas Framework Guidelines
Ofgem contributed to ACER's work to develop Framework Guidelines for the network codes of the European gas market. These network codes will set new European-level rules for how the internal gas market should operate, which will have to be implemented in each Member State.
We led the drafting process, for ACER, on the gas balancing Framework Guidelines and have been actively involved in the development of the capacity allocation management Framework Guidelines. We continue to contribute to the development of transmission tariff structures and interoperability rules.
For further up to date information, please refer to CEER's website .
Gas Regulation Guidelines
We contribute, through ACER and our relationships with other stakeholders, to the comitology process of revising directly the guidelines annexed to the Gas Regulation - link opens in a new browser window.
In particular, we contributed to the development of new guidelines for gas transparency - link opens in a new browser window - (improving information provision), and to ERGEG’s development of recommendations to the European Commission for guidelines on gas congestion management procedures - link opens in a new browser window. We are also assisting our Government in the European legislative negotiations by providing regulatory input and expertise.
Voluntary Guidelines for European Gas
Voluntary guidelines are non-binding documents that aim to share and promote best practices amongst market participants and regulators. We work with CEER in the development of Guidelines for Good Practice (GGP) regarding open seasons and third party access (TPA) mechanisms for storage and LNG system operators.