NMa imposes fines on Dutch network operators Westland and Delta

The Netherlands Competition Authority (NMa) has imposed fines of €388,000 and €338,000 on Dutch regional network operators Westland Infra Netbeheer (Westland) and Delta Netwerkbedrijf (Delta) respectively. An NMa investigation has revealed that neither Westland nor Delta has all of their procedures up to par with official regulations' requirements in order for them to guarantee their electricity and natural gas networks' quality and capacity.

The investigation revealed that the methods of both Westland's and Delta's risk analyses did not meet legal standards. These methods are part of the so-called Quality Control System (KBS), which is used to pre-detect potential threats to the network's quality. This is vital because it enables network operators to prevent failures and outages from happening, events that cause serious harm to the economy and to society as a whole. Furthermore, Delta did not have an updated KBS for three months in 2008 after Delta had reorganized.


Westland was imposed its fines for flaws found in its risk analysis. Delta was imposed its fines for having failed to update its KBS after Delta had reorganized.


The Netherlands has one of the best networks in Europe. In order for the Dutch network to remain one of the best calls for having excellent management and maintenance of these networks on a permanent basis. That is one of the reasons the NMa reviewed the so-called 'Quality and Capacity Documents' (KCDs) of the network operators in 2008/2009 for a second time. Using these KCDs, network operators need to demonstrate that they have sufficient capacity to transport electricity and natural gas from their sources (the supplier) to a business or a household. Furthermore, network operators need to have these procedures up to par in order to guarantee the quality of their networks.


The NMa imposed an order subject to periodic penalty payments on network operator NRE in September 2009, as well as on network operators Obragas en Netbeheer Haarlemmermeer in October 2009 for having failed to have all of the legally required procedures in order to be able to guarantee their natural-gas and electricity networks' quality and capacity.