Bogdan Tudorache

Suppliers can speculate on new market conditions with the rewording of GEO 114. All previously signed contracts that provide for clauses conforming to the first version of GEO 114 are null and void, so new contracts need to be signed in line with the new ordinance 19/2019, amending the GEO 114.

How much did the price rise?

„Only now the new contracts have begun to be sign, so we can not have much details,” Gabriel Purice, President of the Romanian Commodities Exchange, the main gas ring in Romania, told energynomics.ro.

„Old gas suppliers (who have not been able to cancel old contracts with producers) will have to conclude new gas supply contracts with suppliers with whom they had a gas supply contracts recently, but at a different price. This gives rise to a situation of speculation caused by these pseudo-changes, which most likely will end with higher end prices that the suppliers will have to pay for the gas purchased in April 2019,” explains the specialist Dumitru Chisăliţă.

He says that in the absence of GEO 114/2018, gas from domestic production was sufficient to cover the April 2019 demand. „Respectively, in the absence of this, the quantity purchased from the import would probably have been small or would not have existed. Thus, through GEO 114 – there was an artificial demand, but also an artificial increase in the price of imported natural gas,” says Chisăliţă. So some players will make profit, and others will mark losses – a situation that deserves to be thoroughly investigated by the competition authority.