The relevant legal documents applicable for using the services of Gate are:

• The General Terms and Conditions (GTC),
• The Special Terms and Conditions (STC), being the customer specific terms and conditions with regard to the contracted services,
• A throughput Agreement (TA). The TA comprises a signature document and both the STC’s and the GTC’s. The Customer Operating Manual COM, is further detailing certain operational requirements,

In addition, before copies of the above documents are made available to a prospective user, the CA must be signed in favour to the Gate (see section on how to become a new user).

In addition to the COM, a master’s marine services manual (MMSM) comprising ship-shore procedures is available to all customers and prospective users (without signing a CA) and is downloadable from the website.

Regulation

Exemption Decision

The Minister of Economic Affairs, Agricultural and Innovation (ELI) granted Gate terminal B.V. an exemption from certain obligations of the DutchGas Act.

The exemption is granted for 20 years, as of 1-9-2011, and is approved by the European Commission.

The exemption includes the following conditions and instructions:

• The exemption holder applies a UIOLI system, in which at minimum one month before the planned start of the regasification the capacity not used will be offered for sale on the secondary market;
• The exemption holder includes the UIOLI system in every TA to be concluded;
• The exemption holder does not assign 50% or more primary capacity to a party with a dominant position on the gas market;
• The exemption holder sets up a procedure for future capacity expansion that offers all market parties the possibility to show interest in contracting capacity, in an open and transparent process;
• Essential changes compared to the exemption application and the exemption decision must be reported immediately to the Minister of ELI

Notice of this decision was given in the Government Gazette (in Dutch: Staatscourant) on 17 November 2006. A copy of this decision, together with all relevant details, will, in accordance with Article 18h, Subsection 9 of the Gas Act, immediately be brought to the notice of the European Committee.

Gate satisfied all necessary conditions to be eligible for an exemption. In addition, the European Commission concluded that the exemption was justified in view of the project’s risk profile and the business model, based on the separation of infrastructure and gas trading.

European Regulation

Transparency requirements  concerning storage facilities and LNG facilities

Based on Regulation 715-2009, Gate terminal has to comply with Article 19.4 of this Regulation for the duration of its exemption. According to Article 19(4) the following transparency requirements apply:

• LNG and storage system operators shall make public the amount of gas in each storage or LNG facility, or group of storage facilities if that corresponds to the way in which the access is offered to system users, inflows and outflows, and the available storage and LNG facility capacities, including for those facilities exempted from third-party access.
• That information shall also be communicated to the transmission system operator, which shall make it public on an aggregated level per system or subsystem defined by the relevant points.
• The information shall be updated at least daily.  In cases in which a storage system user is the only user of a storage facility, the storage system user may submit to the national regulatory authority a reasoned request for confidential treatment of the data referred to in the first subparagraph. Where the national regulatory authority comes to the conclusion that such a request is justified, taking into account, in particular, the need to balance the interest of legitimate protection of business secrets, the disclosure of which would negatively affect the overall commercial strategy of the storage user, with the objective of creating a competitive internal gas market, it may allow the storage system operator not to make public the data referred to in the first subparagraph, for a duration of up to one year.

The second subparagraph shall apply without prejudice to the obligations of communication to and publication by the transmission system operator referred to in the first subparagraph, unless the aggregated data are identical to the individual storage system data for which the national regulatory authority has approved non-publication.