Ring Fencing

Ring-fencing recognises the requirement under section 4 of the National Third Party Access Code for Natural Gas Pipelines Systems for a service provider to establish arrangements to segregate its business of providing 'Services using a Covered Pipeline' from its other business activities. This is so that the provider cannot access, and use to its advantage, information from those other business activities that would not be available to its competitors.

The Queensland Competition Authority monitors service providers' compliance with ring-fencing requirements and, to assist it in this regard, has published Guidelines for Preparing Ring-fencing Reports, General Accounting Guidelines and Principles for Auditing, Director Cooperation and Reporting of New Facilities Investment, which provide for the collection, recording an auditing of accounting data.

The Authority's further responsibilities in the area of ring-fencing can include the assessment of associate contracts between service providers and any associate, and the assessment of applications for waivers from ring-fencing requirements.