Third party access to gas infrastructure is regulated by the National Gas Law (NGL) in Australia with the amended NGL applied in Western Australia under the National Gas Access (WA) Act 2009 (NGA) which came into affect from 1 January 2010.
Access to gas infrastructure was previously regulated under the Gas Pipeline Access (Western Australia) Act 1998 that implemented the Gas Pipeline Access Law including the National Third Party Access Code for Natural Gas Pipeline Systems (the Gas Code) in Western Australia.
The NGA also provides for the following subsidiary legislation in Western Australia:
Under the NGA a Covered Pipeline Service Provider of a Pipeline that is regulated by the NGA is required to lodge an Access Arrangement with the Economic Regulation Authority. An Access Arrangement is designed to allow the Covered Pipeline Service Provider to develop its own Tariffs and other terms and conditions under which access will be made available, subject to the requirements of the NGA.
The Economic Regulation Authority will seek comments on the Access Arrangement and then may either accept it or reject it and specify amendments it requires to be made to the Access Arrangement. If rejected, the Access Arrangement must be modified and resubmitted. Under certain circumstances, the Economic Regulation Authority may draft and approve its own Access Arrangement. The NGA allows for administrative and/or merit review of the decisions made by the Economic Regulation Authority in certain circumstances.
Important features of the NGA are:
The aim of the NGA is to provide sufficient prescription so as to reduce substantially the number of likely arbitrations, while at the same time incorporating enough flexibility for the parties to negotiate contracts within an appropriate framework.
More information relating to the NGA is available on the Economic Regulation Authority Website.