Regulation (EC) No 715/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 13 July 2009 on conditions for access to the natural gas transmission networks and repealing Regulation (EC) No 1775/2005 (Text with EEA relevance)Text with EEA relevance

• Published date: 14 August 2009
• Subject Matter: energía,Mercado interior - Principios,energia,Mercato interno - Principi,énergie,Marché intérieur - Principes
• Official Gazette Publication: Diario Oficial de la Unión Europea, L 211, 14 de agosto de 2009,Gazzetta ufficiale dell’Unione europea, L 211, 14 agosto 2009,Journal officiel de l’Union européenne, L 211, 14 août 2009

02009R0715 — EN — 24.12.2018 — 005.001

---

This text is meant purely as a documentation tool and has no legal effect. The Union's institutions do not assume any liability for its contents. The authentic versions of the relevant acts, including their preambles, are those published in the Official Journal of the European Union and available in EUR-Lex. Those official texts are directly accessible through the links embedded in this document

►B REGULATION (EC) No 715/2009 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 13 July 2009 on conditions for access to the natural gas transmission networks and repealing Regulation (EC) No 1775/2005 (Text with EEA relevance) (OJ L 211 14.8.2009, p. 36)

Amended by:

		Official Journal
		No	page	date
►M1	COMMISSION DECISION 2010/685/EU of 10 November 2010	L 293	67	11.11.2010
►M2	COMMISSION DECISION 2012/490/EU of 24 August 2012	L 231	16	28.8.2012
►M3	REGULATION (EU) No 347/2013 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 17 April 2013	L 115	39	25.4.2013
►M4	COMMISSION DECISION (EU) 2015/715 Text with EEA relevance of 30 April 2015	L 114	9	5.5.2015
►M5	REGULATION (EU) 2018/1999 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 11 December 2018	L 328	1	21.12.2018

Corrected by:

►C1	Corrigendum, OJ L 229, 1.9.2009, p. 29 (715/2009)
►C2	Corrigendum, OJ L 309, 24.11.2009, p. 87 (715/2009)

---

▼B

REGULATION (EC) No 715/2009 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL

of 13 July 2009

on conditions for access to the natural gas transmission networks and repealing Regulation (EC) No 1775/2005

(Text with EEA relevance)

Article 1

Subject matter and scope

This Regulation aims at:

(a) setting non-discriminatory rules for access conditions to natural gas transmission systems taking into account the special characteristics of national and regional markets with a view to ensuring the proper functioning of the internal market in gas;

(b) setting non-discriminatory rules for access conditions to LNG facilities and storage facilities taking into account the special characteristics of national and regional markets; and

(c) facilitating the emergence of a well-functioning and transparent wholesale market with a high level of security of supply in gas and providing mechanisms to harmonise the network access rules for cross-border exchanges in gas.

The objectives referred to in the first subparagraph shall include the setting of harmonised principles for tariffs, or the methodologies underlying their calculation, for access to the network, but not to storage facilities, the establishment of third-party access services and harmonised principles for capacity-allocation and congestion-management, the determination of transparency requirements, balancing rules and imbalance charges, and the facilitation of capacity trading.

This Regulation, with the exception of Article 19(4), shall apply only to storage facilities falling under Article 33(3) or (4) of Directive 2009/73/EC.

The Member States may establish an entity or body set up in compliance with Directive 2009/73/EC for the purpose of carrying out one or more functions typically attributed to the transmission system operator, which shall be subject to the requirements of this Regulation. That entity or body shall be subject to certification in accordance with Article 3 of this Regulation and shall be subject to designation in accordance with Article 10 of Directive 2009/73/EC.

Article 2

Definitions

1. For the purpose of this Regulation, the following definitions apply:

1) ‘transmission’ means the transport of natural gas through a network, which mainly contains high-pressure pipelines, other than an upstream pipeline network and other than the part of high-pressure pipelines primarily used in the context of local distribution of natural gas, with a view to its delivery to customers, but not including supply;

2) ‘transport contract’ means a contract which the transmission system operator has concluded with a network user with a view to carrying out transmission;

3) ‘capacity’ means the maximum flow, expressed in normal cubic meters per time unit or in energy unit per time unit, to which the network user is entitled in accordance with the provisions of the transport contract;

4) ‘unused capacity’ means firm capacity which a network user has acquired under a transport contract but which that user has not nominated by the deadline specified in the contract;

5) ‘congestion management’ means management of the capacity portfolio of the transmission system operator with a view to optimal and maximum use of the technical capacity and the timely detection of future congestion and saturation points;

6) ‘secondary market’ means the market of the capacity traded otherwise than on the primary market;

7) ‘nomination’ means the prior reporting by the network user to the transmission system operator of the actual flow that the network user wishes to inject into or withdraw from the system;

8) ‘re-nomination’ means the subsequent reporting of a corrected nomination;

9) ‘system integrity’ means any situation in respect of a transmission network including necessary transmission facilities in which the pressure and the quality of the natural gas remain within the minimum and maximum limits laid down by the transmission system operator, so that the transmission of natural gas is guaranteed from a technical standpoint;

10) ‘balancing period’ means the period within which the off-take of an amount of natural gas, expressed in units of energy, must be offset by every network user by means of the injection of the same amount of natural gas into the transmission network in accordance with the transport contract or the network code;

11) ‘network user’ means a customer or a potential customer of a transmission system operator, and transmission system operators themselves in so far as it is necessary for them to carry out their functions in relation to transmission;

12) ‘interruptible services’ means services offered by the transmission system operator in relation to interruptible capacity;

13) ‘interruptible capacity’ means gas transmission capacity that may be interrupted by the transmission system operator in accordance with the conditions stipulated in the transport contract;

14) ‘long-term services’ means services offered by the transmission system operator with a duration of one year or more;

15) ‘short-term services’ means services offered by the transmission system operator with a duration of less than one year;

16) ‘firm capacity’ means gas transmission capacity contractually guaranteed as uninterruptible by the transmission system operator;

17) ‘firm services’ mean services offered by the transmission system operator in relation to firm capacity;

18) ‘technical capacity’ means the maximum firm capacity that the transmission system operator can offer to the network users, taking account of system integrity and the operational requirements of the transmission network;

19) ‘contracted capacity’ means capacity that the transmission system operator has allocated to a network user by means of a transport contract;

20) ‘available capacity’ means the part of the technical capacity that is not allocated and is still available to the system at that moment;

21) ‘contractual congestion’ means a situation where the level of firm capacity demand exceeds the technical capacity;

22) ‘primary market’ means the market of the capacity traded directly by the transmission system operator;

23) ‘physical congestion’ means a situation where the level of demand for actual deliveries exceeds the technical capacity at some point in time;

24) ‘LNG facility capacity’ means capacity at an LNG terminal for the liquefaction of natural gas or the importation, offloading, ancillary services, temporary storage and re-gasification of LNG;

25) ‘space’ means the volume of gas which a user of a storage facility is entitled to use for the storage of gas;

26) ‘deliverability’ means the rate at which the storage facility user is entitled to withdraw gas from the storage facility;

27) ‘injectability’ means the rate at which the storage facility user is entitled to inject gas into the storage facility;

28) ‘storage capacity’ means any combination of space, injectability and deliverability.

2. Without prejudice to the definitions in paragraph 1 of this Article, the definitions contained in Article 2 of Directive 2009/73/EC, which are relevant for the application of this Regulation, also apply, with the exception of the definition of transmission in point 3 of that Article.

The definitions in points 3 to 23 of paragraph 1 of this Article in relation to transmission apply by analogy in relation to storage and LNG facilities.

Article 3

Certification of transmission system operators

1. The Commission shall examine any notification of a decision on the certification of a transmission system operator as laid down in Article 10(6) of Directive 2009/73/EC as soon as it is received. Within two months of the day of receipt of such notification, the Commission shall deliver its opinion to the relevant national regulatory authority in regard to its compatibility with Article 10(2) or Article 11, and Article 9 of Directive 2009/73/EC.

When preparing the opinion referred to in the first subparagraph, the Commission may request the Agency to provide its opinion on the national regulatory authority's decision. In such a case, the two-month period referred to in the first subparagraph shall be extended by two further months.

In the absence of an opinion by the Commission within the periods referred to in the first and second subparagraphs, the Commission...