The state-owned company Energoatom in May lost about 120 million euros due to the machinations of traders in the energy market, which led to a record drop in electricity prices.
About it reported economist Boris Kushniruk.
“In May alone, the state-owned company Energoatom lost € 120 million due to an artificially organized collapse of wholesale prices. More than 3 billion kWh of nuclear power plants were forced to sell at € 25-30 / MW due to abuse and fraud by traders, while while in neighboring Slovakia and Hungary prices were kept at the level of 70 euros, “the expert said in his column for the publication League.no.
He noted that 20 million euros is about half of Energoatom’s annual expenses for the purchase of nuclear fuel and 30% of all capital investments of the company over the past year.
“In such a situation, it is naive to hope for the forecasts of the company’s $ 500 million in profits voiced by (President Zelensky – approx.) This year,” the expert noted.
According to Kushniruku’s estimates, the culprit is the national energy regulator NKREKU, which deliberately allowed fraud and did not react to them in any way.
He described a scheme according to which a group of traders was able to artificially bring down the price to a record 40-50 kopecks. / KWh.
“The volume of such fraud in May alone amounted to 711 million kWh. Taking into account the average earnings from such frauds of 10% of the price, a group of traders in May earned about UAH 66 million. But the damage to all generating companies from this transaction was about 9.2 billion hryvnia “, – said Kushniruk.
According to him, in the near future, law enforcement agencies will begin to investigate this transaction, but the chances of compensation for losses of Energoatom and other state-owned companies are minimal.
As a reminder, in May 2021, the price on the wholesale electricity market dropped to a record low. On some days, prices fell to 43-44 kopecks. / KWh. The reason was the machinations of a group of traders. NEURC officially recognized the fraud only on June 2 under pressure from the Ministry of Energy.
However, the commission officially refused to change the rules of the market to stop such fraud, limiting itself to the intention to manually follow the traders. All proposals of the Ministry of Energy were ignored by the commission.
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