Parliament approved, at first reading, the Draft Amendment to the Law on the Petroleum Products Market, drafted to address existing shortcomings in existing legislation that create risk situations.

According to the authors of the project, the law will expressly state that the maximum retail prices of major petroleum products are set by the National Agency for Energy Regulation, based on the methodology for calculating and applying prices to petroleum products.

Thus, the deputies propose that the maximum retail price be set for the main products of the standard type (COR 95 petrol and diesel) and be calculated and published daily on the National Agency for Energy Regulation website. According to the authors, as a result, the wholesale market for fuels, as well as the retail prices of liquefied gas and all other types of products except the basic ones, will become freer.

The retail sale of other types of major petroleum products than those for which maximum prices are set will be permitted only on the condition that the standard station and products of the standard type are sold. Under these conditions, the state will provide the consumer with petroleum products of strict necessity at regulated, reasonable, transparent, non-discriminatory, and easy to compare prices, respecting the established quality parameters, and on the other hand, will offer them the possibility to freely choose alternative products.

Also, in order to relax the conditions for obtaining the license, it is proposed to reduce by 5 times the mandatory storage capacity that an importer must meet, namely from 5,000 m3 to 1,000 m3. At the same time, another legislative initiative is needed to ensure the energy security of the state in terms of providing oil products in crisis situations.

Another provision of the project refers to the elimination of the need to hold an amount of at least 400,000 euros, as this minimum amount prevents from entering the market the new competitors, consider the authors of the document.

The project establishes that the National Agency for Energy Regulation may adjust the commercial margin in case of occurrence of factors that could not have been foreseen at the time of the previous approval and that it may intervene in the margin structure not more than 10% of the average price registered by the operators.