On 21 February 2012, the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) received an application from the Meridian SeamGas Joint Venture and WestSide Corporation for exemption from ring fencing obligations under ss. 139–141 of the National Gas Law (NGL).
The AER is required to make a decision in accordance with the criteria under r. 31 of the National Gas Rules. An essential criterion for granting exemptions for the ring fencing requirements is that the cost of compliance must outweigh the public benefit resulting from compliance.
The AER will make a draft decision after reviewing all submissions.
The AER requests submissions from interested parties on this matter by 11 April 2012. Submissions may be sent to: AERInquiry
aer [dot] gov [dot] au (AERInquiry[at]aer[dot]gov[dot]au).
To allow for an informed and consultative process, all submissions will be considered as public submissions and will be posted on the AER website. If interested parties wish to submit commercial-in-confidence material to the AER they should submit both a public and a commercial-in-confidence version of their submission.
The public version of the submission should clearly identify the commercial-in-confidence material by replacing the confidential material with an appropriate symbol or ‘[c-i-c]’. All non-confidential submissions will be published on the AER website.