site.btaParliament Passes Energy Act Amendments on First Reading

Parliament Passes Energy Act Amendments on First Reading

Sofia, July 14 (BTA) - Two bills to amend and supplement the Energy Act: one moved by GERB and another by the Reformist Bloc, were passed by Bulgaria's Parliament on first reading on Tuesday. After a break following the debate and the vote on the bills, National Assembly Deputy Chairman Dimiter Glavchev, who presided over the sitting, said that the parliamentary Energy Committee had consolidated the two bills into a single piece of draft legislation which will come up for a second reading.

On a motion by National Assembly Energy Committee Chairman Delyan Dobrev, Parliament resolved to cut to three days the time limit for motions on the consolidated bill.

The revisions proposed by GERB envisage the establishment of an Electricity System Security Fund to raise 5 per cent contributions on the monthly revenues of all energy producers. The proceeds from the sale of greenhouse gas allowances will also go into the Fund. The Fund will be managed by a seven-member Management Board with a chairperson appointed by the Minister of Energy and members representing the ministries of finance, environment and water, and energy, and the energy producers. The activity of the Fund will be regulated by a Council of Ministers ordinance. The financial resources in the Fund will be used to make up the deficit of National Electric Company (NEK) financing for the purchase of electricity under the long-term agreements with renewable source power plants, high efficiency cogeneration of power and heat, and the two US-owned TPPs in the Maritsa East basin.

Under the Reformist Bloc bill, the Council of Ministers will adopt an ordinance on the regulation, public disclosure and optimization of the expenditures of commercial corporations operating under the Energy Act in which the State or a municipality holds an interest of 50 per cent or more. According to these amendments, all energy contracts, annexes and documents modifying them must be publicly accessible and the companies will not have the right to invoke a trade secret.

Dobrev said he does not see anything that could not be adjusted before the second reading of the draft legislation and pointed out that the one-month extension of the time limit for setting electricity prices would be pointless if Parliament does nothing to change the parameters.

Energy Minister Temenouzhka Petkova, who attended the plenary debate on the bills, said, replying to a BTA question, that during checks the Public Financial Inspection Agency has detected a serious problem in some 300 energy sites set up on money from EU funds and programmes and more specifically under two measures of the programmes handled by State Fund Agriculture. Petkova specified that the electricity produced by those power plants has been paid at feed-in tariffs even though they were built on EU grants.

The Energy Minister said that the AES Maritza East 1 TPP has finalized the approval of its price reduction agreement with NEK, and this remains to be done at the ContourGlobal Maritsa East 3 TPP as well. Asked whether money is available to NEK to remit to the two TPPs so that the agreements could take effect, Petkova said that the matter is being taken care of.