The Regulatory Committee within the National Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE) approved the average price hike by ten percent of the final regulated price for industrial consumers, beginning with July 1, 2011.

An ANRE release reads that the gas price hike will have no effect on the household consumers or on the thermal energy producers for the quantity of natural gas used to produce thermal energy in the co-generation power plants and in the thermal power stations, destined to the population's consumption.

The institution says the gas price hike for industrial consumers is motivated by the rise in the imported gas price from 290 dollars per thousand of cubic metres, a price taken into account at the last price adjustment, to a current 460 dollars per thousand of cubic metres, as well as by the modification of the gas mixture structure making up the unit price of gas.

The Government adopted last week a normative document intended to protect the household consumers from future natural gas price hikes. According to the emergency ordinance no 53/17.06.2011, the household consumers and the industrial consumers benefit from separate gas unit prices, with different internal mixture structures and import structures.

Following this measure, the price of the natural gas for the population consumption will stay the same between July 2011 and March 2012, the Government claim.

The last adjustment in the natural gas price was performed at July 1, 2009.