Energy suppliers react after ANRE announced fines for energy market manipulation

Shortly after the publication of the information that ANRE fined several suppliers on the energy market, the Nova Power & Gas company sent a statement by its general manager, expressing his surprise at the conclusions of the National Energy Regulatory Authority.

Samar Ioniță, General Manager of Nova Power & Gas: “Nova Power & Gas is a private company with full Romanian capital, which has the Romanian consumer and investments in renewable energy at the center of its business strategy. In recent years, Nova Power & Gas has offered consumers some of the lowest prices on the market for both natural gas and electricity.

We are surprised by ANRE’s conclusions as far as we are concerned, given that Nova has fully complied with all market rules.

We will continue to provide all the necessary data and information to prove our innocence before the competent authorities and courts”.

The National Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE) discovered, following an investigation, that four electricity suppliers (traders) manipulated the electricity market. For these facts, ANRE applied sanctions exceeding 3% of the turnover, even reaching 7.5%, according to the information published by Hotnews.ro.

The reaction of Tinmar Energy representatives:

“The investigation was started as a result of a notification made by OPCOM through a suspicious transactions report. However, we emphasize that this type of notification is issued automatically by OPCOM based on some algorithms and does not represent an incrimination, but only raises suspicions (which may or may not be confirmed during the investigation) and, as a consequence, requires an analysis to be carried out for checking the context of reported transactions. Such an analysis, if properly conducted by the investigative team, would have led to the conclusion that there was no violation of the law.

The investigation concerned transactions carried out on the PC-OTC market, an anonymous market where market participants do not know who they are trading with until the end of the trading session when they are notified by OPCOM who the contracting party for each individual transaction is. We will prove in court that the very way the market is organized makes an eventual agreement between market participants impossible.

The transactions carried out by Tinmar Energy in the targeted period were aimed at ensuring the energy needed for the consumption of the end customers in the portfolio.”