Illustrative stock photo (source: Sme)
The first ever auction to sell natural gas for Slovak households did not ultimately take place. The organisers of the auction, the FiiFree application and the Krotitelia Energii website, declared the auction, scheduled for November 3, invalid despite the interest of households. The auction should have generated 10-20 percent savings for joined households.
“1,003 registered households with a total annual consumption of 22,613 megawatt hours of gas have joined the auction,” said the co-founder of FiiFree Marián Dlugoš as cited by the SITA newswire. “Nevertheless, only one of 12 suppliers we have addressed joined the auction. Therefore, we have decided to proclaim the auction void.”
The organisers were not able to explain why the interest was so low on the part of suppliers. They communicated with the suppliers before the auction and even reduced the fee that the winning supplier should have paid to one quarter.
Suppliers, who decided not to attend the auction, claim that they did not like the conditions as well as the fact that the current situation on the market does not enable any significant reductions in prices, as cited by the public broadcaster RTVS:
For now, FiiFree and Krotitelia Energií have not decided whether the auction will be repeated. They will do so during the next few weeks.
Usually, auctions to sell natural gas for companies are popular among suppliers.
