Gas price for Romania's population to reduce 3% starting May 1, official says
The power market regulator ANRE decided to cut prices for the natural gas delivered to Romania's population by 3 percent starting May 1, as operators agreed to start recovering some debts later on, the head of ANRE, Petru Lificiu, told NewsIn.
Premier Emil Boc said on April 3 the head of ANRE informed him gas prices will lose 3 percent on May 1, following an analysis completed by the market regulator. However, Lificiu told NewsIn at the end of March that ANRE decided to freeze gas prices for the population starting April 1.
The gas price was last hiked on July 1 2008, when it advanced by 12.5 percent for Distrigaz Sud clients and by 11.6 percent for E.ON Gaz Romania domestic consumers.
Romania had a total consumption of 17.3 billion cubic meters of natural gas last year. About two thirds come from the internal output, while the rest is imported.
Romania faced a gas crisis at the beginning of the year when it had to do without Russian imported gas for two weeks, following a conflict with Ukraine over the shipping price.
Russia's Gazprom cut off gas supplies which transit Ukraine on January 1. Then, the flow of Russian gas through Romania's Isaccea unit was halted on January 6 and that through the Mediesu Aurit unit was paused on January 7.
Romanian authorities redirected gas supplies of large industrial plants to domestic consumers. Most of the biggest industrial consumers were shut down before the gas crisis started owing to shrinking demand caused by the financial crisis.
Moreover, state reserves were used to provide natural gas to people and authorities pledged Romanians will suffer no effects from this crisis. A few power companies joined in to help agreeing to either provide more gas or import more. Also, the local heating electrical thermal plants CET stopped running on gas to help save it and used black oil.
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