EU committee coordinates amendments to EU Gas Directive

MOSCOW, Mar 18 (PRIME) -- The European Parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy on Monday coordinated a compromise edition of agreements to the E.U. Gas Directive.

“Common rules for the internal market in natural gas. As you know, the provisional agreement was reached with the Romanian presidency in the first trialogue on February 12, 2019, and coreper approved the provision agreement on February 20…I open the vote…I close the vote. It is ‘support’ for the provisional agreement,” the committee’s Chairman Jerzy Buzek said at the meeting that was livestreamed on the European Parliament’s website.

The European Commission put forward the amendments to the E.U. gas directive in 2017, suggesting applying the E.U. third energy package to all pipelines that run through the E.U. territory to and from the third countries. The bills require non-discriminatory regulation of tariffs and provision of access of third parties to gas pumping.

This means that the pipelines must have an operator independent of Russian gas giant Gazprom, and third parties must receive access to the capacities. However, only Gazprom can supply gas to the Russian end of the pipeline and is the only company with the right for exports.

The initial draft amendments were softened in February in Strasbourg. The milder version of the amendments envisages temporary exceptions for the pipelines built before the changes come into force. The European Parliament is to vote on them on April 4.

The Nord Stream-2 project envisages construction of two lines of a natural gas pipeline with an annual capacity of up to 55 billion cubic meters, running from the Russian shore to Germany under the Baltic Sea. Russian gas giant Gazprom will implement the project together with Germany’s E.ON and BASF, Royal Dutch Shell, OMV, and France’s Engie.

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