Infrastructure Exclusivity

Picture a city where three different gas companies each decide to dig up the same road to lay their own separate pipeline, at three times the cost and disruption of laying it once. Infrastructure Exclusivity is the sensible rule that prevents this from happening.

It grants the winning CGD company the exclusive right to build gas pipeline infrastructure within its licensed Geographical Area for a defined period, meaning no rival company can lay a parallel network alongside it during that window. This is distinct from Marketing Exclusivity, which governs who can sell gas to customers, since infrastructure exclusivity typically runs for a longer period than marketing exclusivity, recognising that pipeline construction is the more capital intensive, harder to duplicate part of the business.

Together, marketing and infrastructure exclusivity are what make CGD such an attractive, moat like business for the company that wins a Geographical Area, since both the physical pipes and the initial customer relationships are effectively protected by regulation for years before any real competition can appear.