Where are the spot prices for UK gas published?

iamesbo

Where are the spot prices for UK gas published?
(the wholesale spot price)

iamesbo

Does nobody know?
Or is it a secret?
Don't the gas companies want us to know how much they are overcharging us by?
I though running a cartel was illegal in Europe.
One would imagine 'regulating' a cartel was also illegal. (OFGEM)

iamesbo

I would have thought one of the gas company stooges would have been able to answer this one.

beingjdc

http://www.smartestenergy.com/content/item.aspx?pgtSection=2&pgtID=44&subPgtID=65

Currently around 50p a therm to buy spare gas for use right away, but 82p to guarantee it for January.

I had really intended for my thousandth post to be something more exciting than that.

iamesbo

beingjdc wrote: »

http://www.smartestenergy.com/content/item.aspx?pgtSection=2&pgtID=44&subPgtID=65

Currently around 50p a therm to buy spare gas for use right away, but 82p to guarantee it for January.

I had really intended for my thousandth post to be something more exciting than that.

I see that you are trying establish an attitude that an interest in whether people are being over charged for gas is a boring persuit, something which should be discouraged? Why would you want to do that?

Do you in anyway personally benefit from high gas prices?

Any why do you know so much about something you are not interested in?


Also there is not much info here is there?
http://www.smartestenergy.com/content/item.aspx?pgtSection=2&pgtID=44&subPgtID=51
Perhaps it would be interesting if you found out why?

beingjdc

I'm fairly interested in energy prices in general, in a long-term sense - are we running out of oil, will the UK be able to import gas when our fields run out, that sort of thing. Short-term, gas makes no real difference to me as I live in an all-electric block of flats. I might arguably benefit a bit if it goes up, two of the funds in my Equity ISA are alternative energy focused and I guess the more gas costs, the more people will install solar or whatever, but it's hardly megabucks. If they go up 10%, I make £185.

I'm far more interested in the immediate in things which have an immediate effect and on which one can make a decision. So the falling price of houses, I like. The comparison of different suppliers for electricity, is useful. How to reduce council tax banding, that's useful. Is gas more expensive than it should be? Maybe, so find the cheapest supplier, and write to your MP if it makes you feel better.

Are we being overcharged? Hard to say. The cheapest gas supplier seems to be selling at a loss, the most expensive at a huge markup to spot prices, and something of a markup to futures prices. But what does it cost them to get it from wholesale to your house? Capital infrastructure, billing, HR, maintenance, accountants. I just have no way of figuring out what these costs are, so I have no way of saying what is a "fair" price.

iamesbo

beingjdc wrote: »

I'm fairly interested in energy prices in general, in a long-term sense - are we running out of oil, will the UK be able to import gas when our fields run out, that sort of thing. Short-term, gas makes no real difference to me as I live in an all-electric block of flats. I might arguably benefit a bit if it goes up, two of the funds in my Equity ISA are alternative energy focused and I guess the more gas costs, the more people will install solar or whatever, but it's hardly megabucks. If they go up 10%, I make £185.

I'm far more interested in the immediate in things which have an immediate effect and on which one can make a decision. So the falling price of houses, I like. The comparison of different suppliers for electricity, is useful. How to reduce council tax banding, that's useful. Is gas more expensive than it should be? Maybe, so find the cheapest supplier, and write to your MP if it makes you feel better.

Are we being overcharged? Hard to say. The cheapest gas supplier seems to be selling at a loss, the most expensive at a huge markup to spot prices, and something of a markup to futures prices. But what does it cost them to get it from wholesale to your house? Capital infrastructure, billing, HR, maintenance, accountants. I just have no way of figuring out what these costs are, so I have no way of saying what is a "fair" price.

You are really trying hard to steer the interest away from wholesale gas prices
aren't you, I wonder why that is?

I agree it will cost they a lot to employ accountants capable of hiding their vast profits, the ones they have could not hide all the vast profits the gas companies made, shell just weighed in with a staggering 7 billion in the last three month, which
by a remarkable coincidence coincides with their inexplicabley high gas prices.

I don't suppose you are intersted in that though, you don't want to talk about that do you? Would you like to brush the issue under the carpet and talk about something else? Something important like Jonathan Ross being rude to an answering machine for example?

iamesbo

"I have no way of saying what is a "fair" price." but you obviously know that if the price they pay falls by 2 thirds and your price rises, you know you are being ripped off?
I mean, you are not stupid are you??

I'm not.

beingjdc

iamesbo wrote: »

You are really trying hard to steer the interest away from wholesale gas prices aren't you, I wonder why that is?

Because we established what they are (or what they were on the 27th October). I'm not sure what else there is to say about them. You're welcome to do a comparison between them and the price paid by domestic customers, but as I said, getting useful numbers out of that really requires figures for the other overheads, and some knowledge of what percentage of gas the companies buy at a fixed price in advance, and what percentage they buy on the spot market on the day it's needed.

I agree it will cost they a lot to employ accountants capable of hiding their vast profits, the ones they have could not hide all the vast profits the gas companies made, shell just weighed in with a staggering 7 billion in the last three month, which by a remarkable coincidence coincides with their inexplicabley high gas prices.

Well now hang on, you're confusing two separate things here. Shell isn't a "gas company" in the sense of supplying gas to people's homes, it's a gas (more oil, but gas too) company in the sense of getting the stuff out of the ground. So the wholesale price won't tell you anything about whether they're overcharging, only the cost of production will tell you that. It's made huge profits, because supply of oil was below demand for oil, pushing the price up, whereas their costs of production are fairly fixed. Back down now, so I suspect they'll come in with much lower profits next time (unless it goes back up).

Anyway, I'd argue in the case of companies like Shell there's really no such thing as 'overcharging' for a wholesale commodity - you charge what those buying from you are prepared to pay, that's just good business, if someone else thinks they can do it cheaper, they're free to compete with you. That's less true for domestic supply, so it's more interesting to work out whether there's another way of bringing prices down, but with the recent volatility of wholesale prices, that's not going to be quick or easy.

I don't suppose you are intersted in that though, you don't want to talk about that do you? Would you like to brush the issue under the carpet and talk about something else? Something important like Jonathan Ross being rude to an answering machine for example?

If you like, that's getting a bit tiresome too to be honest though. As I said, the things I like talking about here are ones that are going to save me money. Gas isn't at the moment, it might in the future, but beyond switching to the cheapest supplier I'm not clear what I can do. I wouldn't want gas in a house if I could help it now anyway - I much prefer it for cooking, but we're running out, Europe is going to use all it can get and not want to sell us any, so we'll be stuck paying whatever Russia feel they want to charge us. Lots, I suspect.

beingjdc

iamesbo wrote: »

"I have no way of saying what is a "fair" price." but you obviously know that if the price they pay falls by 2 thirds and your price rises, you know you are being ripped off?
I mean, you are not stupid are you??

I'm not.

It depends on the time frame. The price they pay has only fallen by two thirds compared with one day in 2006 when there was a sudden short-term shortage. In fact, at the time of the big panic and the oil price peak, gas was at around £1 a therm: http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/47614/Gas-price-breaks-163-1-a-therm-barrier

So now it's down to about 80p for January delivery, you can say that's a fall of 20%. That's certainly one way of looking at it. On the other hand, you could say it's still an increase of 60% since February, when prices were 50p a therm, (I know this since they hit 60 because of a fire and it was in the papers - http://uk.reuters.com/article/UK_SMALLCAPSRPT/idUKL2909562220080229 )

Now, I don't know, but suppose the gas companies saw the 60% increase over the summer, but felt they could only get away with a 40% increase in the prices they charged customers. Now that prices have fallen back a bit, that would leave them back where they "ought" to be. You could only expect the 20% cut if they'd implemented the full 60% rise in the first place.

iamesbo

Can't say I have seen any sign of them cutting prices, they want to ramp them up even more apparently, and keep them up.
The gas companies got their price up within 3 months, why can't thehy get them back down within 3 months?

Where does Shell and BP's hundreds of billions of pounds come from by the way?
Any clue on that? Car boot sales perhaps?
Obviously they are making nothing on gas, that done for charity. Most probably subsidsinig it out of the shareholders profits.