The price of gas sold on the intraday market in Bucharest on Monday fell below the level of 100 lei/MWh, well below the regulated level of 120 lei/MWh, according to data from the Romanian Commodities Exchange.
The price of gas sold on the spot markets organized by BRM (the day-ahead and intraday market) has been continuously falling for several days, against the backdrop of high temperatures, the more than satisfactory storage with which Romania and Europe came out of the winter and, in general , of the conum that remains reduced.
Thus, if in yesterday’s transactions with delivery today the price dropped close to the level of 100 lei/MWh (105 lei/MWh), at the beginning of the week, gas was traded in the intraday market at the price of 96.6 lei/MWh , at higher volumes than usual.
The spot and intraday markets are the only ones on which transactions are made regularly in Romania, given that the last transaction on the forward market was made on March 26 for gas with delivery in the fourth quarter of this year, and then it was about a volume reduced, of only 6,000 MWh.
There is so much gas that it is already being stored
The situation is quite complicated. Outside temperatures are very high for this period, which has caused household consumption to decrease and, in addition, Electrocentrale București, one of the major consumers, has already announced that it is stopping the supply of heat. Also, against the background of the decrease in electricity prices, including the background of the higher contribution of photovoltaics – it has also reached zero or negative prices these days – the production of electricity from gas plants is also decreasing sharply. On the other hand, a significant resumption of industrial consumption is not yet visible, the only hope being the resumption of Azomureș production at the pre-crisis level – the plant stopped again in December, but in January a partial resumption was announced, with the promise that in the future the plant of chemical fertilizers will operate at capacity.
In fact, there is so much gas now that today, at a production of 24 million cubic meters, about 8.7 million have been injected into underground storage facilities. Imports were 4.8 million cubic meters – most likely delivered based on contracts signed in the past, of which 4.3 million cubic meters are exported today to Hungary and the Republic of Moldova. Even so, the line-pack level of Trasgaz (the amount of gas in the pipelines of the national transport system) is close to the upper limit of the pre-alert level.
At the moment, the degree of filling of underground deposits in Romania is 50%, and for Europe the level is 59%, but Romania is one of the few European countries with significant domestic production.
