Brussels, 16/04/2003 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission's competition department has decided to close the second stage of its probe into the suspected refusal by Dutch gas company Gasunie in the "Marathon affair". Gasuni created difficulties when granting access the Norwegian subsidiary of US oil and gas producer Marathon in the nineties, which is a violation of European competition rules. The European gas directive of 1998 provides for a so-called Third Party Access (TPA) regime, i.e. a regime allowing gas suppliers and shippers to use the gas pipelines owned by the incumbent operators in the market. Gasunie has taken measures to improve transparency of its access regime and to better handle access requests, which has allowed the Commission to close this part of the case. Commissioner Mario Monti said: "Access to gas pipelines is key to the introduction of competition in the European gas markets to the benefit of industry users and, ultimately, the consumer".
The investigation was opened after the Norwegian subsidiary of Marathon alleged joint refusal to grant access to continental European gas pipelines in the nineties by a group of five European gas companies, amongst them Gasunie and Thyssengas, a German gas company with which the Commission reached a settlement on 23 November 2001, after it agreed to improve access to its network. Nederlandse Gasunie has also just agreed to adopt similar measures. Gasunie has undertaken on behalf of its transportation arm Gastransport Services to increase transparency as regards access to its network, to better manage the capacity available and to speed up its handling of access requests. Gasunie will publish on its Internet site - in absolute figures - the contracted transport capacity at all entry and all major exit points of its gas network. It will also inform about the capacity still available. This commitment will make it easier for online balancing system to avoid situations where suppliers/shippers are charged very high prices for the gas supplied by Gasunie to an unexpected increase/decrease in consumption by one of their customers. Finally, Gasunie undertakes to improve its handling of access requests by introducing online screen-based booking procedures, which will lead to the elimination of the, at times lengthy, response times. The commitments enter into force on 21 April 2003 and will remain in place until January 2007.
The Commission indicates that the investigation continues with regard to the other traditional gas operators, "the three major companies in France and Germany" but refused to provide their names. Reuters believe they are the German companies Ruhrgas and Briggitta, as well as the French company Gaz de France.