The Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has issued a draft decision exempting APT Pipeline NT Pty Ltd (APTNT) from its ring fencing obligations under s. 140 of the National Gas Law (NGL).
The AER considered that APTNT’s costs of complying with the ring fencing obligations outweighs any associated public benefit. The exemption will allow staff of APTNT to undertake marketing and sales work for NT Gas Distribution, which is an associate company that takes part in a related business.
The granting of the exemption will not preclude the AER from reviewing the exemption if market conditions change substantially at any time in the future.
The draft decision also repeals a previous ring fencing exemption granted to NT Gas by the ACCC in March 2002.
Invitation for submissions
The AER seeks written submissions from interested parties on the draft decision by 5pm A.E.S.T on Monday, 25 July 2011.
Please forward submissions electronically to aerinquiry
aer [dot] gov [dot] au (aerinquiry[at]aer[dot]gov[dot]au)
Submissions should also be copied to:
Chris PattasGeneral Manager
Network Operations and Development Branch
Australian Energy Regulator
Email: chris [dot] pattas
aer [dot] gov [dot] au (chris[dot]pattas[at]aer[dot]gov[dot]au)To allow for an informed and consultative process, all submissions will be considered as public submissions and will be posted on the AER website. If interested parties wish to submit commercial-in-confidence material to the AER they should submit both a public and a commercial-in-confidence version of their submission.
The public version of the submission should clearly identify the commercial-in-confidence material by replacing the confidential material with an appropriate symbol or ‘[c-i-c]’. All non-confidential submissions will be placed on the AER website.