SEQ Water Market
The Queensland Government has undertaken a number of structural and regulatory reforms to water supply arrangements in South East Queensland (SEQ) in recent years.
The SEQ water market is the wholesale exchange for the supply of declared water services. Declared water services include the storage, treatment, manufacture and transportation of water as declared by the Minister under section 260ZCV of the Water Act 2000. The SEQ Water Grid Manager procures these services from grid service providers (Seqwater and LinkWater) and sells the water supplied through these services to grid customers such as the distributor-retailers.
Read Register of Water Services Declarations (PDF, 91K)*.
Regulatory instruments
A suite of instruments regulate various aspects of the SEQ water market, including:
- SEQ System Operating Plan – November 2011
- SEQ Market Rules
- Grid contract documents
- Operating protocols.
Statutory authorities
New State statutory authorities were established in 2008—under the South East Queensland Water (Restructuring) Act 2007—to own and operate key infrastructure and participate in the market, including:
- SEQ Water Grid Manager
- Queensland Bulk Water Supply Authority - Seqwater
- Water Secure (merged with Seqwater 1 July 2011)
- Queensland Bulk Water Transport Authority - Linkwater.
Rules administrator
The Queensland Water Commission is the rules administrator for the SEQ water market. The rules administrator is responsible for:
- administration and enforcement of the market rules
- monitoring compliance with the market rules
- maintaining a register of grid participants
- proposing and implementing changes to the market rules.
The rules administrator is also required to report annually to the Minister on the effectiveness of the SEQ water market rules in achieving the market outcomes. Three annual reports have been produced:
- Rules Administrator's Annual Market Rules Review 2010-11 (PDF, 249K)*
- Extract from Rules Administrator's Annual Market Review 2009-2010 (PDF, 540K)*
- Extract from Rules Administrator's Annual Market Review 2008-2009 (PDF, 53K)*.
Legislation
Chapter 2A, Part 5A of the Water Act 2000 provides the regulatory framework governing the operation of the SEQ water market.
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