One of the most important pieces of recent legislation on European gas and electricity markets is referred to as the Third Package. The Third Package of European energy reforms created a new legal framework to promote cross-border trade. Part of this, the Gas Regulation, sets out procedures for the establishment of a number of legally binding network codes. These network codes are designed to promote the creation of liquid markets, the efficient use of cross-border transmission capacity and the integration between Member States’ gas markets.
One part of facilitating these objectives is to define a common start time and end time for the gas day across Member States. The relevant EU legislation is contained in the following two European network codes:
These EU legislative requirements take priority over existing GB domestic legislation and associated regulations and codes. Therefore, in order to comply with CAM and BAL, GB’s gas day at interconnection points and downstream must change to that defined in CAM. Implementing this change requires GB’s legal and regulatory framework and industry processes to be modified.
This open letter consults on consequential changes to relevant UK law and licence conditions to comply with EU requirements. We consider that modifications to the following documents are necessary to implement the change to the time of the GB gas day:
We set out a summary of the proposed changes and provide a set of questions for respondents to consider. Illustrative drafting is attached in the annexes to this letter. We welcome stakeholder views on the drafting and questions outlined in this letter. Please email your responses to gasday@ofgem.gov.uk and vanessa.sturman@ofgem.gov.uk by 29 September 2014.