site.btaUPDATED Electricity and Gas Prices for Households Will Not Rise till End-March, Says PM Petkov

The government voted to continue offering compensations in the energy sector, Prime Minister Kiril Petkov told journalists on Thursday after an extraordinary meeting of the government. He added that people should not worry that electricity and gas prices will go up because “the Bulgarian government firmly supports the existing compensation mechanisms.”

Energy Minister Alexander Nikolov said that it is hard to say whether gas supplies are jeopardized by the conflict in Ukraine because our supplier is Gazprom Export. If any problems occur, the Southern Gas Corridor and liquefied gas supplies are alternatives.

There are no delays in oil supplies. Fuel supplies will be discussed with the respective suppliers, Nikolov said. This country’s gas and oil supplies have not been decreased so far, despite the potential threats they face from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, he added. Still the government is looking into various alternatives in case of emergency.

Nikolov said that the current compensation mechanisms will be in place throughout the heating season. Household consumers of natural gas and clients of heating plants that use natural gas as primary fuel have their compensations estimated to be around 30.4 leva/MWh for February and 29.58 leva for March 2022. The planned budget for the programme is 83 million leva.

The network operators will be compensated for their technological costs with the entire difference between the market price projected by the energy regulator and the exchange price they pay for the energy. The funds to cover that (about 221 million leva) are provided by the Electricity System Security Fund, the Energy Ministry said.

All non-household consumers will also be compensated for the high energy costs until the end of March. About 633,000 non-household end consumers of electricity are expected to benefit from this programme, excluding the network operators for whom a separate compensation is planned. The compensation is determined as a fixed sum per MWh of consumed electricity. The specific amount will be calculated as 75 per cent of the difference between the actual average monthly exchange price from the “day ahead” segment of the Independent Bulgarian Energy Exchange (IBEX) for the respective month and the base price of 185.59 leva/MWh (average price of base load on the “day ahead” IBEX market for July 2021). Compensations for clients with prices lower than the average have not been planned. The total value of the aid for the December 2021 - March 2022 period is 815 million leva.

The electricity price on Friday will be 28.5 per cent higher than the previous day. IBEX closed on Wednesday at an average price of 333.85 leva/MWh.