Companies say they will have to pass the additional manufacturing cost onto their customers and the major gas consumers say they will be able to survive on the market, requesting a postponement of the deregulation schedule.
“The rise in gas, electricity and fuel prices and the increase in royalties will drive manufacturing costs up at least 10% to 15%. We will be forced to include this price hike into sale prices,” said Liviu Stoleru, general manager of brick manufacturer Cemacon. Natural gas consumption accounts for about 30% of the company’s production costs.
Once the additional excise duty implemented, the pump price of a liter of gas will be 6% higher, 6.3 lei (EUR1.41), while a liter of diesel will cost 5.8% more, RON6.5 (EUR1.44), according to ZF’s calculations based on the data published on the energy.eu portal. Romanian motorists will therefore pay more for gas than their Austrian counterparts and more for diesel than German motorists.
Major companies in the fuel business say that domestic fuel demand will be flat at about 7 billion liters of gas and diesel at best this year.
Another problem companies will have to deal with will be the impact of the so-called special building tax, applied to refineries and filling stations as well.
The start of April will see one more step taken towards the deregulation of the domestically drilled gas, with the price rising 24% from RON72 per MWh to RON89.4 MWh (or $287 per thousand cubic meters). Domestic natural gas will therefore cost double as much as it did at the start of the liberalization process, RON45.71 per MWh.
Two more price hike steps will follow after April 1, in July and October, driving the price to RON119 per MWh (about $382 per thousand cubic meters). In comparison, Russian natural gas cost about $420 per cubic meters in October-December 2013, according to the energy market watchdog ANRE.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)