How to secure long term project stability and cash flow under the current EC- and Austrian legislation?
Exemptions of standard third party access rules are possible for major new investments: Art 22 of Directive 2003/55/EC (gas) was transformed into Austrian national law as ยง 20 a Austrian Gas Act. Art 7 of EC-Regulation 1228/2003/EC (electricity) is directly applicable. Under these regulations major new infrastructures, meaning cross-border transmission lines both in gas and electricity (interconnectors) and natural gas storage facilities may upon application be exempted from certain provisions governing third party access and tariff setting for a certain period of time and subject to certain conditions. Regularly exemptions granted under these provisions provide for exemption of up to 50 to 80% of the total capacity from obligatory third party access enabling the investors to use this capacity for their own business purposes and to deviate from the application of the general tariff setting provisions for the same period. The exemption is usually granted for the pay-back period for the
