Competition will maintain a special vigilance over the major natural gas companies throughout the year.

Although, in principle, the information file open to energy companies, claiming that their customers are preventing exchange rate changes, expires in May, the institution has decided to extend the period until 2024, according to official sources, and continues to request information from companies every month. supervisor from the Prensa Ibérica group to EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA.

The agency opened an investigation last October and has since overseen the customer service provided by energy companies, ensuring fluidity in the mass transfer of users jumping to the platform. regulated gas tariffs He is seeking help that the government has distributed to make them cheaper due to the energy crisis.

The million-dollar aid plan announced by the government in October has caused an avalanche of requests for contract changes to regulated rates, called rates of last resort (TUR). In just six months over one million customers changed their contract to have regulated gas rateFrom 1.58 million TUR users in September, it reached 2.66 million at the end of March.

Big traffic jam to change rates

In the first weeks, there were huge bottlenecks for energy companies to manage these demands, resulting in extremely long waits and difficulties in concluding contracts. The competition then opened an information file to the four major companies responsible for offering these regulated rates (Naturgy, Iberdrola, Endesa and Totalenergies).

The agency began requesting information that the four major gas companies send each month on the technical and personnel resources used to participate in the flood of requests, the number of calls answered and missed, the waiting times and the number of evacuations. applied.

information companies will have to continue to make remittances on a monthly basis throughout the year. CNMC technicians have been considering the possibility of simplifying and reducing the data requested from major gas companies in recent weeks, but have finally decided not to change the content and format of the required information.

CNMC found that heavy customer transfer from the free market to the regulated gas ratio continued in the first months of this year, with more than 550,000 contract changes in the first quarter alone. “Considering the possibility that this transfer situation will continue, in order not to repeat the problems and difficulties related to concluding a contract with TUR, it has been decided to continue the supervision over the operation of the contracting services of the sellers as a last resort. The last months of 2022,” the agency sources say. “The period of the information has been extended. This information should continue to be sent by companies, including December 2023,” he said.

No penalties for companies

The fact sheet is still open, but CNMC has refused to take the step of filing a sanction case against major energy companies, as this newspaper announced last February. Initiating a disciplinary case would require sufficient evidence that violations were committed, which would open the possibility of sanctioning groups.

The fact sheet is the first step in the audit processes that the CNMC can conduct in regulated industries. In many cases, it serves as a notification to seafarers so that companies can correct their actions before initiating a disciplinary case. And in this case, the agency thinks it’s working, and any blockage issues detected in the first weeks are resolved relatively quickly.

Government aid to millions of households to lower their gas bills shocked and upset the market. Subsidies and the reduction of taxes on the bill serve to reduce the intake of customers with regulated gas rates by 40% and have made a historic commercial comeback, with one million customers changing their contracts in recent months. However, they are still in the minority, and less than a third of all customers opted for already regulated rates (around 5.6 million users continue to use free market rates).