Gas, that’s why bill prices (yet) don’t drop

Today Capone on Sheet explains what is going on gas price and why this has gone from €300/MWh in August to €210-240/MWh in recent months and finally to €75/MWh these days. Spoilers: the price cap and other bullshit have nothing to do with it.

In fact, there are mainly two reasons behind this drop in prices.

1. The first is the slowdown suffered by the economy of China and Europe which has translated into lower consumption and therefore into a lower need for gas by the factories.
2. The other reason is instead related to not too harsh temperatures of this winter which have not particularly encouraged the domestic use of gas.

The Republichowever, he notes that while wholesale prices have gone down, the cost of utility bills has increased by 15%. Today’s opening of the newspaper directed by Molinari seems to all intents and purposes point the finger at the “maranza” centre-right who are in government. But I ask myself: do you really think that this right, so populist and sometimes statist, deliberately keeps the prices of the bills high?

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What happened is a very simple thing that I have told billions of times and who followed Fourth Republic knows well. In the last months bills should have doubledeo triple for many people, but the Authority that deals with placing the pieces at the rates of the protected market has decided to spread the increases over several quarters just in hopes that gas prices would come down.

This means that only in three months’ time will we see the reduction in gas prices translate into a lower cost bill.

The fault of these increases therefore lies neither with this Government nor with the previous one, but with the Authorities who have rightly spread the increase of the previous months over several months. You read it on Republic? Not so. The theme is “Meloni bad”. If there is one thing on which the Meloni is to blame for the increase in fuel against the non-reduction of excise duties. But that’s another discussion.

Nicola Porro, 3 January 2023