SKOPJE (Macedonia), July 4 (SeeNews) – Slovak energy trading company Korlea Invest has applied for an electricity trading licence in Macedonia, seeking to benefit from the further liberalisation of the energy market in the Balkan country, the head of the Macedonian Energy Regulatory Commission said on Wednesday.
“We have issued seven licences so far and two more companies, including Korlea, are currently applying for licences,” Slave Ivanovski told SeeNews on the sidelines of a ceremony for awarding a power trading licence to Westing Electric, a unit of Bulgarian-based Finance Engineering.
Besides Westing Electric, international energy trading and investment group EFT, Greek-owned Enkat Larisa, Swiss Atel and German Verbund also are among the energy traders which Macedonia has licensed so far.
Korlea Invest officials were not immediately available to comment.
Starting from January 1, 2008 industrial consumers, unlike households, will be eligible to choose their electricity supplier.
"Large industrial consumers will have to secure at least 45% of their consumption on the liberalised market,” said Ivanovski, adding that those consumers were around a dozen in Macedonia.
EFT's Macedonian unit signed in March the first deal on the liberalised market of the ex-Yugoslav republic to supply 35 megawatts (MW) of electricity to local ferro-nickel plant Feni for an undisclosed sum. No timeframe for the supplies has been made available.
"The number of traders and how much energy they will supply depend of the pace of liberalisation next year,” said Ivanovski.
Macedonia split its communist-era power monopoly ESM in 2005 into generation unit ELEM, distribution unit ESM AD and transmission company MEPSO as part of plans to liberalise its energy market. Now, ESM is owned by Austrian power utility company EVN.
Macedonia, which imports nearly 30% of the electricity it consumes, has been experiencing proloinged power shortages after its main electricity supplier and eastern neighbour Bulgaria nearly halted exports after closing down a pair of 440 MW reactors at its sole nuclear power plant at the end of 2006 under pressure from the EU.
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