Antimonopoly regulation of economic conduct of gas market participants:the main trends and enforcement practice

Abstract

The author studied violations of the antimonopoly law on the gas sector market. FAS has an increased focus on this market; however, the number of violations keeps going up, constituting a significant share of violations at the industry level. On the gas market in 2014 accounted for 6.7% of all applications, 3.5% of cases and 2.5% of issued regulations. The paper outlines the results of the author's analysis of violations on the gas market by types and Clauses - abuse of dominant position (96.3% of all breaches in this market), agreements and unfair competition.The increase in cases of FAS in the statements of individuals or in respect of individuals tends to increase, which, according to the author, is a negative trend. The circle of subjects of legal relations is shifted from the control of the illegal activities in the area of restrictive practices toward consumer protection. Only in the last six years the percentage of physical the applicants amounted to 45.7% and the number of the violations against physical and legal persons are almost equal (respectively to 48.6 and 51.4%). In General, this diagnose the situation on the gas market, institutional, technological, tariff and other problems, the solution of which consumers can't find in the local governments or other authorities, and I appeal to the Antimonopoly authority.The features of the specifics of processing cases by the antimonopoly authority, the structure of violations and comparative analysis by Clauses of violation. Based on statistical data on violations committed in 2007-2014, content-analysis of FAS official web-site as well as the protocols of the sessions of the Expert Council on developing competition on the gas market, the author highlights the key aspects and problem areas for gas market performance in terms of compliance with the competition law. Systematized the most frequently repeated reasons and painted a portrait of the typical violations. The greatest number of problems occur in the markets associated with the distribution of gas through networks of low and medium pressure and supply to final customers.