Natural gas rises again – The “rift” remains for the ceiling in the EU.

By Chrysostomos Tsoufis

Six days before one more crucial meeting of the Eurozone energy ministers and the schism within the Union over the ceiling on the price of natural gas is well maintained.

The block of 15under the guidance of 4 Fanatics as Greece, Belgium, Italy and Poland are called they ask for a ceiling around them €160 which porro is far from her official proposal of the Commission of €275.

The “reactionaries” have crossed their legs with the argument that the higher the ceiling, the more the security of natural gas supply is at risk since in the coming global competition for LNG, Europe will no longer be an attractive destination. The block has recently been reinforced by France as Emmanuel Macron made relevant statements from Tirana.

The Czech presidency is trying to reconcile the compromises by putting new proposal on the table (after the “for the eyes of the world” first of €260) to €220 and at the same time proposing to reduce the required interval of exceeding the prices to activate the ceiling from 14 to 5.

Somewhere along the line came a separate Dutch proposal to cap the price of gas bought by state-owned companies and used for storage – which The Hague says is what contributed to the August price boom – further complicating the situation.

And as long as the Europeans continue to “play with the caps of the barrels”, the price of natural gas has taken the rise again. From the €105 found on November 11, in December it is firmly above €135, an increase of close to 29%. The wholesale price of electricity was also fatally affected. Greece “got out” the first 25 days of November with prices that were ahead of 2 but from November 26 we “hit” the bullseye again and in fact yesterday’s price was €400/Mwh. Prices that, if they remain at these nightmarish levels, mean that for December the government will have to put its hand deeper into its pocket for bill subsidies and thus use up valuable resources that could be directed to other household and business support needs.

And if for the ceiling, we still don’t know where it will lean, in the Eurogroup the devotees of the “hard line” in terms of subsidies seem to have gotten their heads together. In the announcement of the meeting of the Ministry of Finance, it is stated that in the context of the targeted measures towards the vulnerable, a 2-pole model regarding energy pricing will be considered in 2023.

Behind the words hides the proposal that households and businesses should be subsidized for a certain amount of consumption and pay market prices for the excess amount. Adjusted to the Greek reality, this means that a household or a business will pay 15-17 cents per kilowatt-hour for subsidized consumption and even 40-45 cents (three times that) for additional consumption. A proposal that, if it goes ahead, is expected to cause new frictions within the Union.

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