September 28 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece and Romania joined a majority of EU member states in calling on the European Commission to tackle soaring energy prices by drafting measures to cap wholesale natural gas prices, according to a letter published by Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Wednesday.
Energy ministers from 15 EU countries asked the Commission to put to discussion potential measures at an extraordinary meeting of EU energy ministers on September 30, ahead of drafting legislation as soon as possible afterwards, according to the letter which was addressed to EU energy commissioner Kadri Simson and shared by Mitsotakis on social media.
"The price cap that has been requested since the beginning by an ever increasing number of member states is the one measure that will help every member state to mitigate the inflationary pressure, manage expectations and provide a framework in case of potential supply disruptions, and limit the extra profits in the sector," the letter signatories said.
The request is for a price cap to be applied to all wholesale natural gas transactions, not just to imports from specific jurisdictions. There would be ways to draft the measure in a way that would not affect security of supply, but would still tackle the "untenable inflationary pressures" on businesses and households, the 15 energy ministers argued.
"This cap is the priority and can be complemented with proposals to strengthen the financial oversight of the gas market and develop alternative benchmarks for gas pricing in Europe," the letter said.
The document was signed by the energy ministers from Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain.
Earlier this month, the Commission proposed a new regulation to address surging energy prices, which involved cutting electricity demand, taxing windfall profits in the oil, gas, coal and refinery sectors in 2022 as well as introducing a temporary cap on revenues of electricity producers using technologies with lower costs, such as renewables, nuclear and lignite, to 180 euro ($172.30) per MWh.
The war in Ukraine and subsequent disruption or halting of gas deliveries to Europe by Russia's Gazprom has led to a sharp jump in the price of wholesale natural gas on European spot markets while also prompting fears of potential gas shortages in the upcoming winter season.
In Bulgaria, which was traditionally almost wholly reliant on Gazprom until the Russian company cut off supplies in late April, the current wholesale natural gas price is 353.63 levs ($172.98/180.80 euro) per MWh, compared to 69.40 levs a year earlier.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)