Creditworthiness requirements

This page contains the information that you, as a licence holder, need to know. This information is derived from the rules set out in Annex 1 of the Transmission Code Gas TSO.

 We have set out in three steps below how to calculate your expected exposure, how your credit limit is set and what to do if you exceed it your credit limit (enforcement protocol).

You can always check your current exposure position by visiting our online customer portal Gasport (menu: company information\creditworthiness). 

Your exposure is the total amount of financial obligations that have a bearing on your credit limit and is determined by taking the sum of the following elements:

Your total exposure is made up of the following elements:

• Contracted services
• Imbalance
• Reservations

If your organisation is registered under a Dutch VAT code, you must include 21% VAT in all exposure calculations.

Contracted Exposure

Contract exposure arises as a result of contracting transport capacity.

The contract exposure consists of the sum of:

The monthly financial value of the contract (including VAT and surcharge if applicable) of Yearly (multiply by factor 3), Quarterly (multiply by  factor 3), Monthly, Daily and Within-Day products (actual value).

You can contract capacity if you have sufficient credit available to cover credit risk. If there is sufficient credit limit for the desired booking, your request will be processed, if this is not the case your request will be rejected.

Contracted capacity is invoiced monthly; if this invoice is outstanding for more than 60 days, contract exposure is increased by the amount of the outstanding invoice.

Balancing Exposure

The imbalance exposure consists of the sum of:

• Financial value of the Portfolio Imbalance Signal (POS). This is the current value of the POS multiplied by the neutral gas price;
• Financial value of the balancing actions of the current month;
• Financial value of the Linepack Flexibility Service (LFS), the LFS is always determined on an absolute basis;
• Outstanding Balancing invoices
• Outstanding Settlement invoices

If the sum of the imbalance exposure results in a negative value, you will see an amount of €0. The imbalance exposure is adjusted on a daily basis to the actual imbalance position and applies indefinitely.

Reservation

A fixed imbalance reservation of €100,000 applies to parties with A, B or C licences.

If you want to become active as a shipper on the LDC market (B licence), GTS will reserve a minimum amount of €50,000 for the first year. The reservation is recalculated each subsequent year in March based on three times the value of the highest LDC invoice.

A credit limit is set for each shipper depending on the exposure to be covered. The credit limit is determined based on the financial data and/or on collateral provided.

If available, a financial analysis can be carried out on the company's 3 most recent annual reports. These must be supplied in English or Dutch and approved by an auditor.. A further financial analysis will be carried out every two or three years depending on the particular risk category in which you were placed (medium or low) following the above.

The credit limit resulting from the analysis should at least cover your actual or expected exposure. If this is not the case or you are in the ‘high risk’ category and financial security is required. This may be a security deposit (cash collateral), a bank guarantee or a parent company guarantee.

It is your responsibility to have and maintain a credit limit that matches your intended obligations and is appropriate to your exposure.

The credit available (shown in Gasport as Available Amount) is the amount remaining of your credit limit relative to your exposure. The Spent percentage is derived from this, this percentage shows how much of your credit limit you have used up. If this percentage exceeds 100%, you must provide additional security immediately.

We recommend keeping a Spent percentage of up to 85%. This gives you scope to absorb any imbalances, as well as annual tariff changes. If you want to make transport bookings in the future, you should also consider your credit limit  You can increase your credit limit at any time by providing a security deposit, a bank guarantee or a parent company guarantee.

An end user with exit capacity (EWEX) must provide GTS with this financial security no later than two months prior to the start date of the transport booking.

Supply additional securities (if necessary)
If the first two steps show that your actual or expected exposure exceeds the credit limit, you must provide additional securities. You can increase your credit limit by supplying any of the following: a security deposit agreement (SDA), a bank guarantee (BG) or a parent company guarantee (PCG).

The application documents can be found via this link.

A bank guarantee must be issued by a bank with a Moody’s long-term credit rating of at least Baa2 and/or a minimum Standard & Poor’s rating of BBB. The lowest of the two ratings is applicable.

Financial securities must be valid for (at least) 4 months longer than the contract whose end date is furthest in the future.

The creditworthiness enforcement protocol applies to shippers and EWEXs; it is valid for both programme-responsible parties (PRP) and transport capacity holders (TCH), with creditworthiness being one of the conditions for acquiring and retaining a licence.

This enforcement protocol provides details of the creditworthiness requirements as set out in the Transmission Code Gas TSO (Transportcode) and the Transmission Service Conditions (TSC). This protocol should be read specifically in conjunction with and as a supplement to the Transmission Code Gas TSO and the TSC. GTS may, in exceptional circumstances, bring the enforcement protocol into force earlier or later or make the enforcement protocol, or parts thereof, inapplicable.

If GTS proceeds to revoke the licence, it will notify all approved programme-responsible parties, all suppliers and the Dutch Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) as soon as possible prior to doing so.

What action will GTS take if your exposure exceeds, or is likely to exceed, the credit limit?