Founded 2003 Website www.aggm.at | Headquarters Vienna, Austria | |
Type Joint Stock Company under Austrian law Industry Natural gas supply, gas grid operator Key people Erich Juranek (Executive Board member); Karl Denk (Executive Board member) | ||
AGGM Austrian Gas Grid Management (AGGM) is the entity in Austria referred to as the distribution area manager. Its responsibility in this role is to ensure that the individual gas suppliers are able to provide the required volumes of natural gas to all gas consumers everywhere in the country. AGGM controls the flow of natural gas in the pipelines used to distribute natural gas at supra-regional level within Austria (“Level 1 gas distribution systems”). In this way the company plays a major role in ensuring the functioning of Austria’s natural gas market. AGGM’s registered office is located in the Florido Tower in the Vienna district of Floridsdorf.
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Tasks and responsibilities of the distribution area manager
AGGM’s responsibilities are specified for the most part in the Austrian Natural Gas Act (Gaswirtschaftsgesetz, GWG) as well as in the Energy Intervention Powers Act (Energielenkungsgesetz, EnLG). AGGM monitors and ensures the stability of the distribution area, i.e. that portion of the Austrian pipeline system through which gas is supplied to the country. The most important duties include granting “grid access” as part of capacity management. In managing grid access AGGM closely cooperates with the distribution system operators to enable on the one hand suppliers to feed natural gas for their customers into the supra-regional grid in Austria, as well as to allow consumers to draw the gas they need from the grid.
The Austrian Natural Gas Act additionally requires AGGM to prepare a Long-Term Plan (LTP) for the development of the Level 1 gas distribution systems over a period of ten years. The LTP has to be updated on an annual basis and is subject to approval by Austrian regulator Energie-Control Austria AG (E-Control or ECA). In preparing the LTP, AGGM consults closely with Gas Connect Austria, the entity responsible for the transnational pipelines conducting gas through the country (transmission system), and with the distribution system operators, i.e. companies that manage the regional gas grids within the various provinces of Austria.
Another important responsibility of AGGM is congestion management. Congestion may arise as a result of natural disasters as well as when the international gas supply is limited or interrupted for extended periods due to technical problems or for other reasons.
History
In June 1998 the first Directive of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union establishing a Europe-wide market for natural gas was adopted. The market was to be opened up or liberalised gradually to allow all gas consumers to freely choose their gas supplier. The basis for a competitive market has existed since 1 October 2002, when a strict separation between gas traders and gas system operators was introduced. Natural gas can only be supplied by means of a pipeline system, hence it was necessary to outsource the control of such systems to neutral companies acting independently of any specific gas supplier.
AGGM Austrian Gas Grid Management AG was subsequently established for this purpose by OMV Erdgas GmbH (now called Gas Connect Austria GmbH). AGGM took up independent activities as of 1 January 2003 and had the responsibility, within what was referred to as the “Eastern control area” (i.e. all of Austria with the exception of Tyrol and Vorarlberg), to manage supra-regional gas transports within Austria and to control the domestic pipelines required for the task. In this capacity AGGM was the “regional control area manager” for the Eastern control area.
In the years to follow the European Commission came to recognise the need to introduce stricter rules to ensure the functioning of competition in the gas market. The Commission subsequently adopted two additional Directives aimed at liberalising the gas market, most recently the “Third Internal Energy Market Package” in 2009. The provisions contained in the EU legislation were transposed into Austrian law mainly through an amendment of the Natural Gas Act in 2011.
This resulted in a number of changes for Austria’s gas market, the most significant of which was to migrate to an entry-exit model as of 1 January 2013. With the new gas market model, a gas supplier no longer has to reserve in every gas line, on down to the end consumer, the capacities required to deliver the volumes of gas those customers need. It is sufficient when the supplier reserves the required capacities at those points within Austria’s domestic distribution system where the supplier injects the gas into the grid and where the supplier’s customer withdraws the gas from the system.
When the gas market model was later adopted in Tyrol and Vorarlberg, AGGM’s scope of responsibility was expanded to include those two Austrian provinces as well, so that AGGM is currently the Austrian distribution area manager responsible for the entire territory of the country. In a premiere for Europe, AGGM implemented the entry-exit model in a cross-border system, in cooperation with the German and Austrian energy market regulatory authorities and with the regional gas system operators in Tyrol, Vorarlberg and Germany.
Facts on AGGM Austrian Gas Grid Management AG
Company organisation:
Shareholder structure (as of 1 January 2015):