Competition Council: the deregulation of the gas market must lead to lower prices

The deregulation of the gas market must lead to lower prices, shows the Competition Council, which says that this process  of deregulation takes place in the context of the natural gas prices getting a downwards tendency, which must lead to a reduction of the prices for the consumers. The two big gas producers the council refers to are OMV Petrom and Romgaz.

The representatives of the Competition Council state that the big economic operators must act responsibly both in relation to the smaller competitors and to the clients and should not use abusively the domineering position or not to achieve anti-competition agreements.

According to them, it is very important to inform the consumers with regards to the alternative offers at their disposal presented by the natural gas suppliers. Consumers can evaluate the offers by accessing the price comparison tool available on the site of the ANRE – the regulating authority.

The competition authority will continue the actions of monitoring and will intervene by using all legal instruments at their disposal ( mainly through investigation of the cases of abuse of domineering position and anti-competition agreements).

At the level of domestic market of natural gas the competition mechanisms have been  visible mainly since 2015 both at the level of wholesale and that of the retail (at the level of the non-household users). The level of 1st July 2020 shows the beginning of the change of a number of almost 3.4 million household users from the regulated market for natural gas supply to the competitive one.

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