“Bulgargaz” seeks nearly 28% higher gas price for January

The state-owned company "Bulgargaz" will ask for a 27.6% increase in the price of natural gas from January, the company said at an open meeting of the Energy and Water Regulatory Commission (EWRC) on December 30.

The main reason for the proposed increase is the rise in the prices of the blue fuel on international markets. The rise in the gas price will not result in increase in the price of heating and electricity, assured the chairman of the Energy and Water Regulatory Commission, Ivan Ivanov.

Initially, the public supplier "Bulgargaz" proposed the increase to be 40%, but because of the warm weather and the 20% lower consumption of blue fuel, they have revised the forecast.

Ivan Ivanov, chairman of EWRC: "Neither the price of heating, nor the price of electricity for household consumers will be changed.“

Denitsa Zlateva, Executive Director of "Bulgargaz": "We are influenced both by the prices of indices on the Dutch gas exchange, but in addition, and because of the warm weather in December, Bulgargaz produced much smaller quantities of natural gas from the gas storage in Chiren, and we were virtually pumping much larger quantities of natural gas at a lower price, which enabled us to suppress this extremely high price of the gas stored in Chiren and this will also be reflected in the final price that we will declare in the morning of 1 January."