Three more natural gas suppliers have given up their customers, who end up receiving gas as in the last resort regime (FUI), according to public data and information from sources quoted by e-nergia.ro. The three companies have about 20,000 customers.

ANRE notified Engie on November 24 to take over Mehedinți Gaz’s customers, and since November 26, the customers are effectively in Engie’s portfolio. That would be about 10,000 customers. Mehedinți Gaz was removed from the Transgaz system because it did not pay the balancing costs, which are mandatory for any supplier. As such, ANRE had to switch customers to FUI.

According to market sources, two other suppliers are giving up customers, which will also reach Engie, as a last resort supplier. These are Oligopol SRL and Electric & Gas Power Trade. Also, according to our sources, they did not announce ANRE that they were giving up their licenses – the new regulations do not allow them, if they have customers – and they ended up in the situation of transferring their customers to FUI because they would not pay the balancing cost to Transgaz. Each of the two companies has about 5,000 customers.

Oligopol SRL is from Brașov, is controlled by an individual and also deals with gas distribution in two localities, in Brașov and Covasna. Electric & Gas Power Trade is from Satu Mare, it is controlled in equal proportions by three individuals, two from Romania and one from Germany. The company is part of the Electricnet group, which also includes small producers of energy from renewable sources.