Due to retroactively reduced price of natural gas from July this year District heating services provider EVN Toplofikatsiya said that it will reimburse its customers. The company will refund 2.75 million euros for services provided from July 2019 to April 2020, according to the decision of the Commission for Energy and Water Regulation (KEVR).
Earlier this week, KEVR reduced the price of heating for EVN Toplofikatsiya customers for the period between 1 July 2019 and 30 March 2020 by 5.76 %. Customers will receive their adjustments in the invoices for June 2020, which are received in July. The refund will be carried out via two invoices, one covering the summer months outside the heating season (July 2019 – October 2019) and the other covering the heating season (November 2019 – April 2020).
Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said earlier this week that state-owned gas supplier Bulgargaz will have to refund almost 103 million euros to its customers, due to an agreement with Russian Gazprom on lower gas prices. He stressed that this agreement struck earlier in March is the main reason why wholesale gas price is now 52 % lower compared to a year before. Of these 103 million euros, Sofia district heating utility will get some 30.7 million euros, gas distribution companies will get 11.2 million euros, chemical companies 26.6 million euros, while glass industry will get around 8.2 million euros. Bulgargaz has already received a refund from Gazprom following the March agreement for a decrease of the gas price as of August 2019 by over 40 %, and now it has to distribute the money among its clients, who have paid the higher price applicable prior to the agreement. On 2 June, the gas company sent out draft agreements to its clients indicating how much it owes them for the period from 5 August 2019 to 31 March 2020, and has said that it is ready to make the payments before waiting out the statutory 14-day period from the signing of the agreements.
