The Government has ordered the return to the State coffers of more than 200 million euros of “unused capital” by the natural gas system manager, REN (Redes Energéticas Nacionais), within the framework of the natural gas support package approved by the previous Executive.
At the height of the energy crisis in 2022, the Socialist government made €1 billion available from the State Budget as an extraordinary measure to contain gas prices paid by companies. This measure comes in a context in which the invasion of Ukraine sent gas prices soaring into the stratosphere, partly due to cuts in Russian supply.
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The package was approved in October 2022 with the aim of stabilising prices for the following year. However, market developments turned out differently than expected and natural gas prices stabilised at a much lower level. And the measure, which for several companies was approved late – only in October 2022 for the year 2023 when the worst of the crisis occurred in the second and third quarters of 2022 – ended up being underused.
This situation was already evident a year ago, when REN published the first data on this support, the implementation of which in the first half of 2023 was less than 100 million euros, creating a huge financial and budgetary cushion, as the Observer wrote.
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Recognizing the existence of a slack, the Government of the time used part of the funds to finance the electricity system and tariffs for 2024. For the same reason – the fall in prices in the wholesale market – it was necessary to inject hundreds of millions of euros into the system to compensate for the increase in costs with producers with a fixed price contract (above the market value). And, in October of last year, 200 million euros of support for natural gas were transferred to electricity tariffs, which, even so, were updated by 3.7% in 2024.
In October last year, REN had already returned to the state coffers 700 million euros unused from the initial check of 1 billion euros (from this repayment came the funds for electricity tariffs). Now, by order of the Ministers of Finance and Environment and Energy, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento and Graça Carvalho, an additional 200 million euros are being returned “of unused capital in its custody, including the respective financial compensation derived from the availability of unused capital between the dates of transfers by the State and the respective repayment by the GTG (technical manager of the global gas system)”.
Like the first 700 million euros, these 200 million will be transferred “to the State Treasury, to the Treasury’s budgetary revenue account and to the Public Debt Management Agency (IGCP)”.
In total, only 100 million euros of the 1 billion euro package will have reached the large natural gas consumers. The amount now being returned to the State is more than double the estimated impact of the reduction in VAT on electricity for a monthly consumption of up to 200 kWh approved in the PS initiative.
Source: Observadora
