At least one offer for gas supply below the capped price currently exists, according to the price comparator, namely 0.30 lei/kWh, which shows that the offers we see at 0.42 lei/kWh are frivolous, declared on Wednesday the president of the National Energy Regulatory Authority, George Niculescu.
“I checked the price comparator that we have at ANRE level and you should know that in the price comparator there are currently active offers for the supply of natural gas after April 1, so after the capping expires, of 0.30 lei, so below the cap price that was established by the Emergency Ordinance. There is at least one offer below the capped price. This shows me that, just as happened in the case of electricity, the offers we see at 0.42 lei per kWh from natural gas suppliers, from my point of view, are frivolous offers. A supplier that comes with an offer of 0.42 lei per kWh for natural gas, after the cap price was established at 0.31 and there are offers of 0.30 in the market, is a supplier that no longer wants to carry out the supply activity. I am sending these suppliers very clearly that they can come to the institution and request the suspension of the supply license because there are offers “…unserious offers put on the market,” Niculescu explained to Digi24, quoted by Agerpres.
He emphasized that, just as, in the case of the price of electricity, suppliers were grouped around 1.5 lei and currently there are active offers of less than 1 lei per kWh, the same is expected to happen with natural gas.
“I expect that, from April 1, we will have a fair transition to a free market. Yesterday (Tuesday, note), by Order of the Regulatory Authority, we established the obligation for all suppliers to notify by March 2, as an information attached to the invoice, all natural gas consumers in Romania regarding the contract price – because if we signed a contract 2 years ago, when the price was capped, we may no longer know what price we have in the contract -, the method of changing the supplier and other relevant data regarding the price of natural gas. We established this obligation in advance, so that natural gas consumers are informed about what is going to happen after April 1, what rights they have and what obligations the suppliers have, the contract prices and the methods of changing the supplier”, added the ANRE president.
He also stated that, as in the case of electricity, when they see that there are lower price offers than those they have in their supply contracts, consumers can change their supplier.
“650,000 consumption places were ported from one electricity supplier to another in 2025, the peak months being July and December, with approximately 100,000 Romanians who changed their electricity supplier in search of a lower price. I urge natural gas consumers to do the same with suppliers, because they cannot remain in contracts that have a price higher than the regulated price for a period of approximately 4-5 years,” George Niculescu said.
The head of ANRE reiterated that the change of supplier is done within 24 hours, at no cost.
He also recalled that the authority has among its duties the monitoring part, to see exactly what is happening in the electricity and natural gas market in real time and to act. Also, when the monitoring part signals aspects related to practices that do not fall within the market regulations, in detail, it intervenes and ‘drastically’ sanctions any deviation from the regulations.
“And the fines applied since I took over the mandate as president of the Regulatory Authority, from April 2023 until now, are the largest fines ever applied by this institution. It is a signal that we have given from the beginning: we do not tolerate such practices”.