MSE News: Wholesale gas prices at 'year low' as energy firms hike rates

Former_MSE_Helen

This is the discussion thread for the following MSE News Story:

"Wholesale gas prices fell to their lowest level of the year on the day energy company Eon announced its latest hike ..."

Read the full story:
Wholesale gas prices at 'year low' as energy firms hike rates

MillicentBystander

The energy companies will just say they bought the gas 6/12/18/24 months ago, whichever period of time when the wholesale costs were highest. They do seem to have a knack of buying high and selling high, don't they, lol? The saddest thing is I really don't think the energy companies actually care how high the wholesale costs are as they know they will just recoup it from the punters...plus most of them also have their own generating arm, I believe.

eurmalian

I rather like the implicit suggestion in this article that rather than planing it all out for weeks/months, one of the executives just woke up that morning and went "Hey chaps, I fancy upping our prices a tad. What do you say? Shall I get on the blower to the papers?"

Dave_C_2

I thought we had a regulator to look after the consumer's interests in these cases!

Obviously not working, or perhaps a palm greased to turn a blind eye.

Dave

MillicentBystander

Dave_C wrote: »

I thought we had a regulator to look after the consumer's interests in these cases!

Obviously not working, or perhaps a palm greased to turn a blind eye.

Dave

There's a regulator?? Are you sure?? :eek::p

kar999

At least the Coop is transparant with it's policy. I didn't fix and switched to them so maybe... just maybe I might see a price reduction!

When you sign up to Co-operative Energy, we buy your energy upfront for at least three months. So when costs rise, we don’t have to raise our prices immediately. Instead, we can give you plenty of notice and guarantee to keep your price unchanged for at least one month (we are aiming for three), to give you time to shop around if you want to. That’s part of our policy of openness, honesty and transparency. But when prices fall, we’ll pass the benefit on to you straight away.

Dave_C_2

MillicentBystander wrote: »

There's a regulator?? Are you sure?? :eek::p

Yep, Ofgem! They have a website and everything to look cool!

It's just a crying shame that they don't do what they were set up to do. The energy companies are bleeding us dry and Ofgem does NOTHING about it.

Dave

Pincher

Phew, about time.

So evil energy supervillain Lex the Chief Exec saw energy prices both present and future sliding, and says:

"Oh no, if this keep going, we will have to lower prices.
We have to get the mentally subnormal customers to fix at high prices by scaring them with sky high rises. We'll delay lowering variable rate tariffs as late as possible, probably a week before an Ofgem enquiry."

So, E.On energy traders will be buying futures contracts when they get low enough. The first set of these will become FixOnline 10.
As the contracts get cheaper there will be better ~14 month Fixes.

so I am expecting this switch schedule:

1st September: FixOnline 10 comes out, do nothing, not cheap enough.

13th September: Switch SaveOnline 8 to SaveOnline 9. Ride the cheaper variable rate.

1st October: FixOnline 11 comes out, maybe worth it

1st November: FixOnline 12. Dirt cheap one year fix. Ride it through winter 2011/12.

Consumerist

. . . and electricity prices sunk to their lowest point two days previously, at £45.2 megawatts per hour.

Re-arranging this nonsense into something meaningful, one assumes that is supposed to mean £45.20 per megawatt-hour or, for the purpose of comparison with retail prices, the energy companies could be paying a spot price of 4.52p/kWh.

This compares with around 10p/kWh charged by the energy companies. That's quite some mark-up.

MillicentBystander

Consumerist wrote: »

Re-arranging this nonsense into something meaningful, one assumes that is supposed to mean £45.20 per megawatt-hour or, for the purpose of comparison with retail prices, the energy companies could be paying a spot price of 4.52p/kWh.

This compares with around 10p/kWh charged by the energy companies. That's quite some mark-up.

10p/kWh is the cheapest online rate you can get at the moment (and then only from those suppliers who have yet to put up their prices) so the vast majority of punters will be paying waaayyy over 10p/kWh. :eek:

ihateyes

you gotta remember the 2 top men at the head of ofgem both get paid over 200K a year, and remember who actually pays these men their wages.... yip the energy companies!