Providers to be obliged to stock gas for at least months under law in Moldova

Chisinau, 7 April /MOLDPRES/ - The parliament today approved, in the first reading, the draft on amendment of the law on natural gas, law on energy sector, Criminal Code.   

The draft’s main goal is to provide the normative framework needed for an efficient management of eventual emergency situations in the natural gas sector and attenuate their consequences.  

The document provides for the clarification of the tasks and powers of the authorities involved in the management of the emergency situations in the natural gas sector.  

Under the draft, decision-makers establish the legal framework necessary for ensuring the transparency on the wholesale market of natural gas, in order to exclude the abuses or the manipulation actions. At the same time, the ambiguity of interpretation is excluded as to the actions which can be regarded as manipulation of the market, as concerns the obligations belonging to the participants in the natural gas market, who hold privileged information.  

In the context, the draft suggests introducing of two new economic offences in the criminal legislation: manipulation on the natural gas market and the abusive use of privileged information on the natural gas market.

The law will clearly establish that the government is in charge of ensuring the state’s energy security, including of the gas supply sector.  

The draft regulates the compulsoriness for the last option provider to stock, in one of the neighbor countries, natural gas reserves in sufficient volume for a period of two winter months. Otherwise, the concerned persons will be liable to sanctioning.