Abstract
The Gas Act 48 of 2001 makes provision for the differentiation of prices between customers based on quantities purchased. The Competition Act, on the other hand, aims to prevent anti-competitive conduct which includes, among others, price discrimination – especially if such discrimination is likely to impede the effective participation of SMEs and/or firms owned by HDPs. To this end, this study examined the extent to which Sasol Gas’ price discrimination practice is likely to fall foul of section 9(1)(a)(ii) of the amended Competition Act 89 of 1998 during the period from July 2015 to June 2018 – using publicly available monthly data. To conduct this examination, this study followed the draft price discrimination enforcement guidelines released by the Competition Commission of South Africa in 2019. First, the results show that Sasol Gas had market power in the market for the trading of piped gas to traders during the period from July 2015 to June 2018. Second, the study found that Sasol Gas practised second-degree price discrimination, and this may have impeded the effective participation of SMEs and/or firms owned by HDPs operating at the retail level of the piped gas supply chain. As such, although Sasol Gas’ conduct may well be within the parameters of the Gas Act, it is likely to contravene the amended Competition Act. Based on these findings, this study recommends that the Department of Energy, in conjunction with NERSA, must consider amending the Gas Act in line with the amendments made to the Competition Act to ensure policy coherence.