We cannot be surprised that summer is warm now. All participants in the gas business could have anticipated how much gas would be needed for the heating season back in February, when storage would be filled and surpluses would appear – said a hydrocarbon expert commenting on the latest gas affair in which HEP sold surplus gas below market prices.
First of all, HEP, and then the crisis management team and HERA, could have predicted the necessary quantities of gas months ago and reacted in time, rather than being surprised by the appearance of gas surpluses now, says our interlocutor.
– HEP should have reacted much earlier, as should all participants in the chain, but it seems that everyone was somewhat nonchalant. Towards the end of the heating season, the necessary quantities of gas can be quite well assessed, especially in a situation where one of the largest consumers, Petrokemija, is not operating at all. The regulation to eliminate disturbances in the energy market was necessary during the gas price surge, but by the end of winter, when it was clear that prices had calmed down, it should have been abolished. It is now evident that no one was looking ahead at all – he commented.
Stoic Endurance of Losses
Although HEP is now justifying that it has warned the relevant ministry several times and that documents confirming this have leaked to the public, a careful reading of these documents concludes that HEP is more concerned about its liquidity and lack of funds to purchase gas from INA than about the gas surpluses. In none of the documents does it request, for example, that the regulation be repealed, or that it be exempted from the obligation to purchase gas from INA, stoically enduring the creation of new losses.
And while before the affair emerged, HEP was sending letters to the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development, after the scandal escalated, we learned from the media that HEP’s CEO Frane Barbarić and Minister Davor Filipović have recently spoken on the phone, raising the question of whether they could have perhaps communicated live on this topic before it began filling newspaper columns and ended up on the front pages.
Regardless of what the outcome of the latest gas affair will be, judging by the latest amendments to the controversial regulation, new problems in the gas business are just beginning.
– There has never been greater chaos in the energy market than today. Due to egos and petty political interests, people are dragged through the mud, and those who should regulate the market are not doing their job. Now that gas prices have stabilized and there is no longer a need for crisis interventions and regulations, instead of abolishing all these measures and letting the market ‘do its job’, the government has adopted a new regulation, which is extremely unclear and ambiguous. It is difficult to read how participants in the gas market who suffer damage due to it will be compensated – says our interlocutor, who has been in the energy sector for many years, adding that the continuation of gas measures is particularly problematic because the European Commission has already warned Croatia about the first regulation to eliminate disturbances in the domestic energy market, adopted last year.
