As of 10 February 2017, companies planning to engage in natural gas trade must register in the Natural Gas Traders' Register in accordance with the Regulations Regarding General Authorisation and Registration in the Energy Sector. A company must register in the Natural Gas Traders' Register if it plans to trade natural gas to any energy users, except the trade of natural gas in gas filling compression stations for vehicles. See the Cabinet of Ministers Regulations No 1227 Regulations Regarding Types of Regulated Public Utilities of 27 October 2009.
For a company to register in the Natural Gas Traders' Register, it must send a Notification on the Registration of the Natural Gas Trader (Regulations Regarding General Authorisation and Registration in the Energy Sector Annex 5) to the Regulator. The responsible employees of Regulator will renew the Notification and will include the company in the Natural Gas Traders' Register within a few days.
To become a public service provider in the sectors of natural gas transmission, distribution and storage, a public service provider requires licences for natural gas system services and tariffs approved by the Regulator.
What must be done to receive a licence, amend licence conditions or cancel a licence
To receive, amend or cancel a licence, an application and documents must be submitted to the Regulator in accordance with the Cabinet of Ministers Regulations No 664 Regulations Regarding the Licensing of Public Utilities of 30 August 2005.
To amend licence conditions, an application (Annex 3) must be submitted if a service provider has widened or narrowed the zone for the provision of services, has changed the name or the types of provided services have changed. An application for the cancellation of a licence (Annex 4) must be submitted if the provision of services is terminated.
The Regulator shall take a decision on issuance of a licence, making of amendments to the conditions of a licence, cancellation (revocation) of a licence or a decision on refusal to issue a licence within 30 days after receipt of the relevant application. The application shall be regarded submitted on the day when the Regulator has received all the documents and all the necessary information.
The natural gas transmission in the territory of the Republic of Latvia is carried out by the transmission system operator – JSC „Conexus Baltic Grid”, natural gas distribution is carried out by the distribution system operator - JSC "Gaso", while natural gas storage is performed by the storage system operator - JSC „Conexus Baltic Grid”. The following licences were issued by the Regulator for natural gas distribution, transmission and storage:
In order to optimize the European Union Member States’ information exchange process between the natural gas market participants (producers, traders and consumers), the Latvian transmission system operator JSC "Conexus Baltic Grid" has acquired the status of the Local Issuing Office (LIO) of Energy Identification Codes (EIC) for natural gas market participants.
- Application form for EIC codes;
- List of EIC codes approved by the Central Issuing Office (CIO);
- EIC Reference Manual.
The validity of EIC codes can be verified here by entering the EIC identification code consisting of 16 symbols in the "Check validity" box.
More information about the EIC code allocation system and procedure can be found on the JSC "Conexus Baltic Grid" website.