Romania to deregulate power and gas markets by 2007

The Romanian authorities are planning a complete deregulation of the power and natural gas markets by 2007, when Romania hopes to join the EU. With a 33% deregulated energy market and 30% for natural gases, Romania is one of the candidate countries with the highest deregulation degree. Still, analysts have warned that deregulation may collide with privatisation in the two sectors and also spoke about certain anomalies on the free energy market.

The deregulation degree of a market represents the weight of the eligible consumers, from the free market, in the total domestic consumption posted in the previous year. The eligible consumers, unlike the captive consumers, are allowed to buy power or gases directly from the producer or the supplier by negotiating the price, which thus drops some 15% – 20%. The National Regulatory Authority sets the price paid by the captive consumers for the electricity and heating.

According to the roadmap for the energy system, the gas and power market deregulation up to 40% is to be decided in December. As of 2004, the power market will see a bigger deregulation degree, up to 55% towards the end of next year (as compared with 50% for the gas market), namely 80% by mid 2006 (up from 75% in the gas sector).

EU directives request the deregulation of both gas and power markets, in order to create the single deregulated European market. The deregulation of energy markets started in 2000 in Romania, when liberalisation up to 10% of the power market was endorsed. In the following year, 10% of the gas market was deregulated, whereas the deregulated power sector went up to 15%. But analysts claim the real free market is much smaller, comprising eligible consumers who changed suppliers as soon as they were no longer captive. adrian.mirsanu@zf.ro