The Commission has accepted legally-binding commitments from ENI SpA ("ENI") in order to settle Article 102 proceedings. The commitments are expected to open up access to Italy's natural gas market and lower the price of gas supply to customers.
ENI is an Italian state-controlled company active in the markets for the production, supply and transportation of gas in Italy. The commitments follow a Commission investigation which was launched in 2007 in relation to the alleged abuse of a dominant position on gas transport markets. The Commission notified ENI in a formal Statement of Objections of March 2009 of its preliminary view that ENI may be abusing its dominant position by:
- refusing competitors access to excess capacity on the international transit pipelines in which it owned major interests;
- offering competitors access to the pipelines in an impractical manner; and
- under-investing in those pipelines to its own advantage.
The Commission considered that ENI's behaviour may amount to capacity hoarding, capacity degradation and strategic underinvestment, which would have made it difficult for competitors to supply gas in the downstream market resulting in higher prices being charged to consumers.
Following the decision this week, ENI will have to divest its 89% stake in the TAG pipeline, which carries Russian gas into Italy, as well as its 49% stake in the TENP pipeline and its 46% stake in the Transitgas pipeline, which both carry gas from Northern Europe. The sale of ENI's shareholdings will be supervised by a trustee and will be subject to the final approval of the Commission. At the moment, it is likely that ENI's shares in TAG will be sold to Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, an Italian State-controlled company.
The Commission's acceptance of ENI's commitments is considered to remove the conflict of interest resulting from ENI's vertical integration and closes the antitrust proceedings without any finding on the existence of an infringement.
This is the ninth major antitrust decision in the energy sector since the Commission's 2007 sector enquiry - which concluded that customers and businesses were losing out because of inefficient and expensive energy markets. It is also the fourth time that structural divestments have been accepted in the sector – with E.ON and RWE of Germany and GDF Suez of France each having previously agreed to structural remedies.
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