The employers of the gas sector, sedigashas taken a step forward and has proposed to the Government what some traders of last resort (CUR) had already conveyed to it: that free market companies can also supply natural gas with the regulated rate (TUR), now limited by law at four CURs (subsidiaries of Naturgy, Iberdrola, Endesa and TotalEnergies).
Following the Government’s decision to subsidize this fee with a budget item of 3,000 million euros by 2023, there has been an avalanche of requests from free market customers (6.5 million) to contract the TUR (in whose market, until the announcement of the measure, there were only 1.5 million users).
In an assembly held last week, the 26 Sedigas partners, who make up its committee of marketers, unanimously approved sending a letter to the Secretary of State for Energy of the Ministry for Ecological Transition, Sarah Aagesen, and the CNMC, in which they offered “their collaboration in the search for solutions for” the coexistence of measures of a social nature with the functioning of the free market. The TUR subsidy, which implies an increase cap of between 4% and 5% quarterly over the next year, may result in the de facto disappearance of the free gas market.
In the letter, sent on Friday and to which he has had access Five days, Sedigas proposes to enable a mechanism so that the subsidized rate can be offered by any marketer on a voluntary basis; focus public subsidies on vulnerable consumers or the option of subsidizing all consumers (free or regulated) as the German Government has done”.
Among the Sedigas marketers, the largest in the sector stand out, such as Shell, Pavillon, BP, Plenitude (ENI), Engie, Naturgy, Axpo, Repsol, Uniper, Naturgy or Iberdrola (the latter two supply both the free and regulated markets through their respective subsidiaries). The first has 2.5 million customers in the free market and 1.2 million in the regulated market, while Iberdrola has one million in the liberalized market and 54,000 in the TUR.
Although the 26 distributors have signed the letter, this does not mean that they are all willing to supply with the regulated tariff, but rather leave this option open or that all customers be subsidized. In any case, none is willing to become a CUR, a complicated process that would force them to create a new regulated subsidiary and that would require the approval of the Government through a royal decree.
According to the letter sent to the Secretary of State for Energy, the gas companies consider that the TUR “has a price well below cost and therefore much lower than the offers on the free market, which is transferring signs contrary to efficiency and savingsand causing a massive transfer of clients from the free market to the TUR.”
The transfer of customers at this rate could last a year, according to Sedigas, “with the social tension that this would cause.” The CUR are being accused of negligence due to the delay in making the changes and all of them claim to be reinforcing their teams.
Bottleneck
As they remember in the letter, the management also implies a change with the distributor, “which is causing a bottleneck despite the measures to expedite the management of said requests both by the distributors and the marketers involved, already a unprecedented discontent among consumers as a whole”.
At this point, they remember the ministry that directs Teresa Ribera the solution adopted by other countries, such as Germany, “where all consumers have the same right to receive the subsidy offered by the Government, regardless of the marketer that supplies them.
The situation generated by the incentive to the tariff of the domestic ones, puts “at risk” the activity of the companies of the free market, “and even his survival, creating an irreversible lack of competition, despite the fact that it has been proposed as a temporary solution with a transitory term that could be enough to completely end the free retail market”. Something “contrary to the regulations on promotion of the free market included in European and Spanish regulations,” concludes Sedigas.
Business sources say that the ministry is studying the companies’ proposals, although it has not given any clues as to what the solution might be.
The German model that subsidizes everyone equally
Avalanche. Until the Government announced its decision to subsidize the Last Resource Tariff (TUR) for natural gas, transfers from the free market to the regulated market at this price were barely 60,000 per year, according to data from the CNMC. For this reason, “the transfer operation was simple and did not require too many troops”, recently indicated sources in the sector.
jam. But the avalanche of requests for change, both face-to-face and by telephone or through the Internet, has put the marketers that offer said rate by law in serious trouble. Especially in the case of Naturgy, the first in the sector, with 2.5 million customers in the free market and 1.2 million in the regulated market. Both she and Iberdrola, the second CUR, claim to manage thousands of daily contracts. For its part, Endesa, the next on the list, had signed tens of thousands in October.
To all. Although through Sedigas, the large and medium-sized companies in the sector have asked the Ministry for the Ecological Transition to allow the TUR to be offered to all their clients, deep down they prefer the German option. This country has decided to offset the price of natural gas for domestic consumers this winter, offering all the traders the possibility of selling at a reduced price, which is later compensated for all the companies.
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