Lithuanian company gets warning for REMIT breach

The Lithuanian national energy company Lietuvos energijos gamyba has received a warning for trading with insider information on 30 June and on 1 July last year, the country’s regulator said on Thursday.

By trading on the Nord Pool Spot power exchange while having insider information, the company caused potential losses for the exchange operator and other market participants and breached EU’s Regulation for Wholesale Energy Market Integrity and Transparency (REMIT), the regulator has found.

Lietuvos energijos gamyba admitted the breach. “It was a human mistake,” said a spokesman for the company.

In one instance, a 455MW unit of the Lithuanian Power Plant had an outage, which due to a misunderstanding was reported 60-70 seconds after Lietuvos energijos gamyba made a bid to the market, he said. The second breach related to the same unit and was of a similar nature.

The Lithuanian regulator National Commission for Energy Control and Prices could not be reached on Thursday for more details.

Exchange Nord Pool Spot reported the cases to the regulator as potential breaches in October 2014, after which the regulator launched an investigation.

At the end of first quarter this year, 37 potential REMIT breaches were under investigation in the EU, the Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators said in a report (see EDEM 1 July 2015).

In May, Denmark’s natural gas market regulator asked the Danish Prosecution Service to start a criminal investigation into whether a company has manipulated the wholesale gas market in the country. This is the only case of a potential REMIT breach ICIS knows of to be referred to criminal prosecution. laura.raus@icis.com