“Fuel demand was remarkably high, especially in Romania,” said Andreas Matje, chief financial officer of OMV Petrom, the largest local oil company.
Fuel consumption in Romania rose by 6.2% in the first half, according to Petrom data, and the fuel retail segment grew by 5%, while the commercial segment by almost 25% compared with the same time last year.
Fuel demand started showing signs of rebound as early as the end of last year, and one of the main reasons for that was the decline in prices due to the oil price drop.
Another factor for the increase this year is that last year in April the market was badly hit by the introduction of the fuel excise duty of EUR0.07 per liter, which drove fuel prices up and forced many fleet owners to refuel abroad.
The gross domestic product trend played a part in the increase of fuel consumption, too, as commercial sales of fuel show.
Electricity consumption went up 2% in the first half, compared with the year ago period. Though the increase is small, it continues the trend of last year, when there was a resurgence in electricity consumption after two years of decline. Moreover, electricity export increased by 11%, which led to a 3% increase in production.
The increase in power consumption continued in July, because of the high temperatures outside. Coal-fired plants covered part of the demand.
“As of July 1, 2015, coal electricity accounts for 30% of the consumption registered by the National Energy System. The CE Oltenia thermoelectric power plans with all their generators operational generate 95% of the coal electricity,” say the representatives of Complexul Energetic Oltenia. The high contribution of the coal-fired plants is because of a lower contribution of the hydropower plants due to the extended drought and a slow summer for wind power plants.
The only major energy market that is yet to recover is the natural gas consumption market. Petrom data show natural gas consumption fell by 7% in the first six months of the year, largely because of the lower demand from fertilizer producers and thermal power producers.
Chemical industry saw the steepest decline in natural gas consumption, which was 23.3% lower in the first four months than in the year-ago period, according to ZF calculations based on the data supplied by the energy market watchdog ANRE. Whereas the chemical industry used 3 billion cubic meters of gas in 2008, in 2013 it used 2 billion cubic meters and 1.7 billion cubic meters in 2014.
Maybe the only good news about the decline in natural gas consumption is that Romania has become a marginal market for imports of Russian gas. The percentage of gas imported via intermediaries from Gazprom once stood at 30% and fell to 0.09% in April, according to ANRE.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)