The Verkhovna Rada adopted as a basis the bill on natural gas market

Information Department of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Secretariat
05 March 2015, 13:12

The bill (Reg. No. 2250) was elaborated to create an efficient competitive environment at the natural gas market with consideration of main requirements of the EU legislation.

The draft law stipulates:

legal, economic and organizational foundations of functioning of the natural gas market;

creating a normative basis of activity at the natural gas market;

ensuring non-discrimination access to the natural gas market of all its subjects and all consumers; etc.

To ensure competitiveness at the natural gas market, the bill suggests a mechanism of separating the activity connected with managing the gas infrastructure from the activity of vertically integrated organizations connected with extraction and supply of natural gas.

The bill plans to secure state regulation at markets of transporting services, distribution and preserving natural gas and service of LNG terminal.

The bill stipulates establishing a natural gas commodity market which would incorporate wholesale and retail markets.

Moreover, the bill stipulates a function of "the final hope" provider (a guaranteed provider) which has the right to supply natural gas in exceptional cases (bankruptcy, cancellation or termination of license and other exceptional cases), but:

prices for natural gas of such a provider must not harm the competitiveness at the market;

such a provider carries out supplies during a maximum period suggested by the bill (45 days).

Participants of the natural gas market are also a consumer, vulnerable consumer and protected consumer.