Rosseti Tyumen lost 20 billion. The company compensates for the shortfall in revenues by increasing tariffs
The main blow will take the oil and gas industry. Explosive growth of electricity transmission tariffs is expected in the regions of Greater Tyumen. The local regulator began to compensate Rosseti Tyumen for the shortfall in income that the company managed to accumulate in recent years. During the consideration of the application of networkers in the REC of the Tyumen region, it was found that during this time the Surgut “daughter” of “Rosseti” lost tens of billions of rubles.
The main reason for this was a record decline in energy consumption, mainly from the oil industry, who were forced to limit hydrocarbon production under the OPEC + agreement. So far, taking advantage of the opportunity for accelerated tariff growth, the REC has taken into account only a small part of this amount, but in the next periods the regulator will have to compensate Rosseti to the last penny. According to market participants, this will become another factor in increasing the price burden on all consumers in the region along the chain. Given the structure of consumption in Western Siberia, the main blow will again be taken by oil and gas holdings, which are already declaring unreasonable tariff increases and trying to optimize costs by simply leaving the national power grid.
The REC of the Tyumen Region increased the required gross revenue (RGR) of Rosseti Tyumen (part of PJSC Rosseti) in 2023 by 21.6% at once compared to the previous year.
Thus, the total amount of funds that the company will collect from consumers will immediately increase from 55.2 to 64 billion rubles. As a result, the network tariff increased from 1.74 to 1.90 rubles per kilowatt-hour at high voltage. On other voltage ranges, the cost of transmission also increased by 25-30 kopecks.
As follows from the regulator’s resolution, the growth of NGR is due to the fact that in 2023 entrepreneurial profit in the amount of 3.1 billion rubles was taken into account. In addition, the NGR included shortfalls in the company’s income that arose due to changes in prices and volumes of productive output in 2018-2021. They were taken into account only partially and amounted to more than 3.1 billion rubles.
However, this is only a small part of the company’s accumulated shortfall in income: in total, the Tyumen energy commission must create conditions for Rosseti Tyumen to acquire another 17.7 billion rubles, which will be taken into account in the following periods, creating an even greater burden on consumers.
It is noteworthy that 2023 was the first year of a new long-term regulatory period, on the basis of which the company’s NBB will be indexed in subsequent years. Accordingly, the higher the costs, the more significantly the tariff can be raised in the future.
A Pravda UrFO source in Rosseti Tyumen explained that the multibillion-dollar shortfall in income arose due to a strong drop in the productive supply of electricity, starting in 2018.
Recall that the Surgut subsidiary of Rosseti closed 2018 with a loss of 2 billion rubles, which arose against the background of a reduction in productive supply. This trend was associated with the implementation by Russian oil companies of the international agreement OPEC +, which led to a reduction in hydrocarbon production and, as a result, a sharp decline in electricity consumption.
In addition, the high cost of network electricity has prompted large industrial enterprises of the northern territories to switch to their own generation, which in the aggregate has led to an even greater reduction in productive supply in recent years. In 2020, the problem reached its peak, and the loss of networkers amounted to 3.4 billion rubles.
The head of Rosneft, Igor Sechin, appealed to the President of the Russian Federation with a request to reconsider approaches to setting prices for electricity. At the end of 2021, he, in particular, pointed out that over the past five years, the balance of economic interests in the energy market has been upset in favor of energy producers and grid companies. This, according to Sechin, led to a significant increase in tariffs for oil companies.
For example, for RN-Yuganskneftegaz fields, prices increased by 55% from 2015 to August 2021.
As noted in the market, now only restoring productive supply to the pre-crisis level can save the situation and prevent further growth in the cost of energy resources. However, there are no significant prerequisites for this yet. According to Rosseti Tyumen, for the 3rd quarter of 2022, the transmission volume amounted to just under 40 million kilowatt-hours, which is comparable to the figure for the same period of the previous year. At the same time, oil production in Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug showed an increase of 5.3% over the six months.