This letter seeks views on our proposals to modify certain licence conditions relating to the definition of “gas day” to align them with the EU legislative definition.
We consider these changes are necessary to implement the EU requirement for a harmonised start to the gas day as mandated by the relevant EU Network Codes.
In summary, our proposals are:
“Gas day” is the daily period over which gas transmission system operators work.
EU Network Codes are detailed binding EU laws, and so take priority over domestic legislation.
Further details on the provisions of that EU legislation, the background to it and Ofgem’s powers and duties in respect of it, is contained in our open letter dated 28 July 2014. This asked for views on consequential changes to relevant UK law and licence conditions to comply with the above EU requirements.
Having considered the responses to this letter, we are publishing statutory consultation notices with our proposed modifications to the Standard Licence Conditions of the Gas Shipper Licence and the Gas Transporters Licence, and the Standard Special Conditions and Special Conditions of certain Gas Transporter Licences. These proposed licence modifications are detailed in full in the statutory consultation notices published below with this consultation.
We welcome views on our proposals and the drafting of these modifications.
We have updated the links to the notices of our statutory consultation on proposed licence modifications to ensure GB compliance with the EU legislative definition of “gas day”. Our proposals remain unchanged but we have made some minor corrections. We have added a notice that we sent out by post to relevant licence holders, but didn’t upload online. We also updated the names of the links.
Finally, we would like to highlight that proposed changes to the Standard Licence Conditions of the gas transporter licence, Standard Licence Condition 9(1B) (Network Code and Uniform Network Code), apply to Independent Gas Transporter licensees only as they are the licensees who have this condition switched on in their licence (as already indicated in our open letter dated 28 July 2014).
In these circumstances, we are extending the consultation so that it will now close on 4 June 2015.