COMPETING WITH THE AGGREGATORS: SOME ISSUES WITH THE NATIONAL THIRD PARTY ACCESS CODE

Broadly stated, the objective of the National Third Party Access Code for Natural Gas Pipeline Systems is to promote competition in natural gas markets. For the National Access Code to achieve this objective in a meaningful way, it must allow prospective gas suppliers to gain ready access to pipeline systems. This paper considers two particular aspects of the National Access Code which may cause difficulties for new gas suppliers who wish to compete with incumbent gas aggregators. The first issue relates to the ease with which a new gas supplier can identify what spare capacity is available in a pipeline. The second issue is what type of capacity a new gas supplier can hope to obtain.