Energy giant agrees to allow competitors greater access to the French gas market.
The European Commission said today that it had reached an agreement with the energy giant GDF Suez that will make it easier for other companies to enter the French gas market.
Under the agreement reached with the Commission, GDF Suez will release approximately 7 billion cubic metres of import capacity each year in 2010 and 2011. This amounts to 10% of France’s total import capacity.
The company also agreed that, by 2014, it will ensure that its share of total capacity is reduced to below 50%. It can do this both by investing in new capacity that would be open to competitors, or by divesting existing capacity.
The company controls two-thirds of the pipelines and terminals through which gas can be imported into France.
The agreement ends an investigation that the Commission launched in May 2008, because of concerns that GDF Suez had a stranglehold on import capacity and was using this to exclude competitors from the market. This would have broken EU antitrust rules, for which Commission would have been able to fine GDF up to 10% of its annual turnover.
“The Commission’s specific concern was that GDF Suez was blocking competitors’ access to the infrastructure,” Neelie Kroes, European commissioner for competition, said today.
She said the company had reserved “almost all capacity on the relevant pipelines and terminals” for up to 20 years.
Kroes said that the agreement announced today will “give consumers more choice of supplier and more competitive prices. This will in turn contribute towards an integrated and competitive single European energy market.”
A GDF Suez spokesman said that “we are very delighted and proud of the fruitful co-operation…with the European Commission” that had led to the agreement.
The Commission earlier this year fined the company €553 million in a separate case concerning antitrust violations on the French and German markets.