Stadtwerke Gießen AG (SWG) firmly rejects the criticism from the tenants' association and Haus und Grund regarding the increase in its gas prices. "The reason for our gas price increase lies in higher procurement costs. These are economic facts and by no means 'wishy-washy attempts at justification', as implied by the tenants' association," says Manfred Siekmann, Chairman of the SWG Management Board. Mr Siekmann continued: "We obtain our gas from our upstream supplier, E.ON Ruhrgas AG, via long-term supply contracts. The link to the oil price is part of these supply contracts. With the current explosion in world market prices for oil, our procurement costs have also risen significantly." The company has not passed on this increase in procurement prices in recent months (the last price increase was on 1 January 2005), but has now reached the limit of what is economically feasible. SWG would therefore have to pass on some of the increased procurement costs to its customers. There is currently no more favourable alternative on the market to the long-term supply contracts with a link to the oil price. Manfred Siekmann: "We would like to buy more favourably for our customers. But this is not possible with the current conditions on the gas markets. We hope that in future the municipal utilities will be given full freedom of disposition for their gas purchases and will then be free to decide whether they want to cover their gas purchases through long-term supply contracts, short-term purchases or a combination of both. We have the expertise to do this, as we have been very successful in electricity purchasing for many years. We also want to utilise this experience in the gas sector for the benefit of our customers. In response to the tenants' association's accusation that we earn money from gas at the distribution level, Manfred Siek-mann says: "Of course we have to earn money from the sale of natural gas. After all, we have to invest in the maintenance and servicing of the networks and systems in order to guarantee a high level of supply security. This also makes it possible to expand the gas network so that we can offer the benefits of this energy to more and more customers." The desire for the environmentally friendly energy of natural gas is unbroken. As the tenants' association itself points out, natural gas holds the leading position in the German heating energy sector with 47.2 %. Today, three out of four new houses are equipped with natural gas heating. These figures speak for themselves.
05.10.2005