Natural gas tariff for end users to remain unchanged: Energy Supervisor

The price of natural gas will not be hiked for the final consumers, though the acquisition price of gases bought from Gazprom grew in the first quarter of this year from $283 to $332.6 for one thousand cubic meters, the National Agency for Energy Regulation (ANRE), is quoted by Info-Prim Neo as stating. If the situation, created during the last months on the world market of oil products and on the Moldovan currency market, remains stable, the tariffs on natural gas delivered to consumers will remain unchanged for a longer period of time, or they may even fall, reads a release aired by ANRE. General director of the agency Vitalie Iurcu specified that, though the new price established by Gazprom is 17.5 % higher than the acquisition gas price registered de facto in the quarter 4 of 2008, the agency will not modify the present gas tariffs. “Taking into consideration the planned slump of the acquisition price, and the fact that Moldovagaz recorded unplanned incomes in 2008 resulting from the appreciation of the leu and the additional gas having transited Moldova's territory, this hike is framed in the limits admitted by the tariff methodology in force,” Iurcu maintained. ANRE director added that “the estimative calculations of the agency prove that the increasing rate of the acquisition gas price in the 1st quarter of 2009 will be fully covered by the reducing rate of this price in the next quarters of the same year.” He argued this decline through a continuous decrease of the world quotations of gasoil and fuel oil, starting August, 2008, which directly influence the amount of the price of the natural gas imported from Russia. According to the contract signed in 2006 by Moldovagaz and Gazprom, the acquisition price of the natural gas in the first quarter of this year was calculated arising from the average trading price of the gases delivered by Gazprom to European countries, registered on January 1, 2009, adjusted to the reducing coefficient for Moldova which is 0.8. During 2008, the acquisition price of the gas bought from Gazprom grew from $191 to $283 for one thousand cubic meters. As a result of these hikes, ANRE updated the tariffs of the natural gas delivered to consumers twice: in January and in July 2008. Starting with August 1, 2008, the average tariff of delivering natural gas is 3,523 lei (without the 5-per-cent VAT) per one thousand cubic meters.