In a conference organized last Thursday by the Intelligent Energy Association and online publication www.energy-center.ro, Dumitru Chisăliță, one of the most respected experts in the natural gas market in Romania, launched a civic initiative for rewriting of the Natural Gas Network Code. The initiative is part of the country project Starting over in the Gas Market in 10 steps, launched last year by the Intelligent Energy Association, aiming at building a real market for natural gas and removing the pseudo market, which primarily hinders the gas consumer.

The civic initiative, Dumitru Chisăliță underlined, is not an alternative and it is in no way adversely to the projects and working groups already launched by the regulator (ANRE), the Government or other centers of expertise and decision. As the initiator put it, the natural gas sector is characterized by numerous dysfunctions, discontents and disorientation, and any vision for the natural gas sector must start from the need to rebuild it from zero, step by step, “with TRANSACTION placed at the center of the future construction of the new gas sector “.

Dumitru Chisăliţă calls all the experts and all the stakeholders in the natural gas market in Romania: producers, suppliers, traders, distributors, centralized platforms, consumers, legislators, regulators, but also the Competition Council and the National Authority for Consumer Protection.

The president of the Intelligent Energy Association has also presented an analysis of the reasons why the Natural Gas Network Code does not currently operate, with a damaging effect, including from a financial perspective, on many of the active operators in the natural gas market, mainly suppliers.

Here we list only the main categories:

1. Legislative framework which stand against implementing the Natural Gas Network Code
2. Incomplete text of the Natural Gas Network Code (no clear principles and no clear description of the manners of doing some activities)
3. The physical configuration of the current NTS and its adjacent systems
4. The lack of flexibility mechanisms on the gas market in Romania
5. The lack of information platforms and means for data transmission
6. Actions of sabotage against the Natural Gas Network Code implementation process
7. Incompetence

Full analysis can be read here: The Natural Gas Network Code: why it does not work (analysis by Dumitru Chisăliță).