The National Commission for the State Regulation of Energy, Housing and Utilities Services (NCER) has postponed the term for launching daily gas balancing from December 1, 2018 until March 1, 2019.

The decision was made at a meeting of the regulator on Friday, as the gas distribution pipelines operators are not ready to work with the daily gas balancing platform in the fully functioning mode.

Thus, part of the gas distribution pipelines operators was unable to timely and properly - in electronic form and with the electronic digital signature - submit a request for gas volumes for December.

Acting President of PJSC Ukrtransgaz, the gas transmission system operator responsible for testing the daily balancing platform, Andriy Khomenko said that the operators are not very active in testing the electronic platform.

In turn, Naftogaz Ukrainy CEO Andriy Kobolev, focused on the need for an audit of the consumer base.

"It is necessary to reconcile the codes in the system and those codes issued to consumers. Without this audit, in my opinion, the launch of this platform will contain the risk that those consumers whose information for some reason was not submitted by operators to the system will be disconnected," he said.

According to the decision of the commission, during December, requests for gas volumes can be submitted both electronically and in paper form, from January 2019 - exclusively in electronic form.

As reported, the commission twice postponed the switch to daily gas balancing: first from August 1 to October 1, and then to December 1, 2018. At the same time, the inaccuracy/incorrectness of the data provided by gas distribution pipelines operators was one of the reasons for the transfer of the start of daily balancing to December 1, 2018.