In mid-December, Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service, or FAS, promulgated revised antitrust regulations that apply to the wholesale and retail market for electricity.

The new measures represent the efforts of the Russian antitrust watchdog to counteract price rigging and consolidation by electric grid operators. The new requirements are tailored particularly to the electricity transmission sector. As such, the regulations give the FAS authority to establish prices on electricity in given regions, as well as to endorse or reject a territorial generating company’s system for making particular price determinations.

Under the new framework that was put in place, a dominating energy company is defined as an entity controlling 35 percent of the market, or, in the alternative, an entity responsible for the production of at least 20 percent of electricity within a given region. The rules also govern the methodology to be used in ascertaining whether substantial alterations in electricity prices have taken place.