It’s unbelievable, and in retrospect the whole thing looks like a carefully prepared event. Practically everything that has been happening lately is constantly increasing gas prices, up to values where it will be basically unusable because no one will have money for it.
The rise in prices does not stop
As if the current geopolitical problems were not enough, which in the past months already raised the price to an absolute, never-before-seen maximum. As a result, Czech suppliers have already started to change their price lists, which show several times higher amounts than what people have been paying so far.
These prices are very high, but people have somehow prepared themselves for the fact that they will have to pay them. The state also wants to partially help, albeit relatively little. But as it turns out, this could all just be the beginning, because something much worse is about to happen.
Europe has already slowly begun to detach itself from Russian gas, although it is a project for years, but liquefied gas from the United States of America was supposed to play a major role in the replacement. But this idea has now received a significant crack, because a terminal exploded out of nowhere in Texas, which was supposed to be one of the main hubs from where LNG was supposed to flow to Europe. The fix will take a very long time and as a result gas prices have shot up again.
All bad news
The Russians, who don’t like that their European clients are looking for alternatives, decided to take advantage of this. So they decided to remind them how dependent they are. The largest supplier of natural gas has thus significantly throttled supplies to Europe, which means that it will probably not be possible to fill the reservoirs for the winter.
Unfortunately, everything seems to be going towards making gas as expensive as possible in the winter. Even the biggest pessimists expected that the record prices would begin to fall within a year, but that is not happening. And once the winter season comes, it shoots even higher again.
This will of course be reflected in the payments of end customers. At the same time, the state has already declared that it cannot cover these increases for people, its maximum is symbolic help. The winter will be really harsh.
Petr Vavrenka’s commentary
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