Romania in talks with EU to delay natural gas price liberalisation

The Romanian government has entered talks with the European Commission about delaying liberalisation of the countries natural gas market, ICIS has learnt.

On Tuesday the energy department announced plans to postpone for two and a half years the deregulation of prices for household consumers. This would mean the end of regulated domestic prices by 2021, rather than 2018 as originally expected.

A source within national energy regulator ANRE said this cannot be done without the approval of the commission, which the government is currently seeking to obtain.

Romania also has bail-out commitments around energy liberalisation with the International Monetary Fund, and at this point it is not clear how these might be affected.

Another source within the country suggested the proposed delay is likely due to the presidential elections in November. They argued the incumbent Traian Basescu does not want to alienate voters by raising prices, which was originally expected to take place next month.

The industry source added: “I think they have caved into pressures of the large consumers. What they should do is accelerate the liberalisation process, which is what we wanted, but instead it looks as if they will do the opposite.”

Eugenia Gusilov, managing director at the country’s think tank Romania Energy Center (ROEC), told ICIS on Tuesday that the government’s current efforts are directed at temporarily freezing the regulated price for both industry and households until the end of the year.

If a recent government decree proposal is signed by the relevant authorities including the prime minister, the household price will be kept at Romanian Leu (RON) 53.3/MWh from 1 October, instead of being raised to RON54.6/MWh, she added. The price for industrial buyers will remain at RON89.4/MWh from this date, instead of jumping to RON119/MWh.

At the start of this month, Romania’s government launched a consultation over the proposed liberalisation agenda, which expired on Monday. This included the question whether regulated prices should be extended for households in the long term ( see ESGM 2 September 2014 ). Ben Samuel