National Statistical Institute of Bulgaria

Environmental and Energy accounts Department

National Statistical Institute

2, P. Volov Str.; 1038 Sofia, Bulgaria

European statistics on natural gas prices for household and final non-household customers.

Internal Eurostat classification system based on annual natural gas consumption bands and tax levels.

Household sector and final non-household sector (industry, services, offices, agriculture, etc).

The prices are collected in national currency (BGN) per GJ and according to different bands of consumption.

For the household customers, the following bands are applied:

• D1: Customers consuming less than 20 GJ.
• D2: Customers consuming 20 GJ or more but less than 200 GJ.
• D3: Customers consuming 200 GJ or more.

For the final non-household customers, the following bands are applied:

• I1: Customers consuming less than 1000 GJ.
• I2: Customers consuming 1000 GJ or more but less than 10000 GJ.
• I3: Customers consuming 10000 GJ or more but less than 100000 GJ.
• I4: Customers consuming 100000 GJ or more but less than 1000000 GJ.
• I5: Customers consuming 1000000 GJ or more but less than 4000000 GJ.
• I6: Customers consuming 4000000 GJ or more.

Two different levels of disagregation for semestrial and annual prices exist:

1- Semestrial prices:

These prices are reported twice per year in 3 levels:

• Level 1 prices: Prices excluding taxes and levies.
• Level 2 prices: Prices excluding VAT and other recoverable taxes and levies.
• Level 3 prices: Prices including all taxes and levies.

2- Annual prices:

These prices are reported once per year together with the data for the second semester and are allocated into the following components and taxes:

• Component "Energy and supply": commodity price for natural gas paid by the supplier or the price of natural gas at the point of entry into the transmission system, including, if applicable, the following end-user costs: storage costs plus costs relating to the sale of natural gas to final customers.
• Component "Network": transmission and distribution tariffs, transmission and distribution losses, network costs, after-sale service costs, system service costs and meter rental and metering costs. The network cost is split into the respective shares (%) of transmission and distribution, calculated using the relative share of consumption in the different consumption bands. This way is calculated the single national natural gas prices (weighted averages for consumer bands IA-IF and DA-DE) whicha are published only by Eurostat.
• Taxes:
• Value added taxes (VAT): as defined in Council Directive 2006/112/EC.

  • According to the Value Added Tax Law in Bulgaria, the VAT paid shall be refunded to:

    • any taxable persons who are not established within the territory of the country but who are established and registered for VAT purposes within another Member State in respect of any goods purchased and services received thereby within the territory of the country;
    • any persons who are not established within the territory of the European Union but who are registered for VAT purposes in another State: on a basis of reciprocity;
    • any non-taxable natural persons, who are not established within the territory of the European Union, but have effected purchases of goods for private use inclusive of tax charged, after leaving the territory of the country, subject to the condition that the said goods are exported in an unaltered state.
• Renewable taxes: taxes, fees, levies or charges relating to the promotion of renewable energy sources, energy efficiency and CHP generation.
• Capacity taxes: taxes, fees, levies or charges relating to strategic stockpiles, capacity payments and energy security; taxes on natural gas distribution; stranded costs and levies on financing energy regulatory authorities or market and system operators.
• Environmental taxes: taxes, fees, levies or charges relating to air quality and for other environmental purposes; taxes on emissions of CO₂ or other greenhouse gases. This component includes the excise duties.
• All other taxes: taxes, fees, levies or charges not covered by any of the previous four categories: support for district heating; local or regional fiscal charges; island compensation; concession fees relating to licences and fees for the occupation of land and public or private property by networks or other devices.

State subsidies - Remarks on Gas Prices data for Households for 2^nd semester of 2021 and Components for 2021:

1. At the end of 2021, in response to the increased prices of natural gas for the final consumers, Bulgarian government has approved a program to compensate the household customers for a several winter months starting with December 2021. This affected current 2nd semester reporting together with the components for 2021 and will affect the next reporting for 1st semester of 2022. The program envisages a temporary mechanism to support household customers through the gas suppliers in the form of a monthly compensation, calculated and invoiced for every customer based on its consumption for the month. The compensations are fixed price in BGN/MWh without VAT and that is why they are deducted from the total final amount after VAT charging.

2. Gas price reporting of 2^nd semester of 2021 - The compensations provided by the state for December 2021, but weighted with the quantities of natural gas consumed for the period July - December 2021, are deducted from the third level of natural gas prices "All taxes incl." after the VAT charging.

3. Gas price reporting of Components of 2021 - The compensations provided by the state for December 2021, but reported on annual basis, are included in subcomponent "Other" of component "Taxes, fees, levies and charges".

Household and final non-household consumers divided into consumption bands.

Target of the survey are household and final non-household customers buying natural gas for their own use that is distributed through mains. Combined deliveries of Compressed natural gas (CNG) via trailers are excluded.

Household customers:

2019 - Data are reporting by 20 suppliers out of 21 and represent 100% of the household customers. One company do not supply household customers.

2020 - Data are reporting by 20 suppliers out of 21 and represent 100% of the household customers. One company do not supply household customers.

2021 - Data are reporting by 24 suppliers out of 25 and represent 100% of the household customers. One company do not supply household customers.

Final non-household customers:

2019 - Data are reported from 21 suppliers out of 21 and represent 100% of the final non-household customers.

2020 - Data are reported from 21 suppliers out of 21 and represent 100% of the final non-household customers.

2021 - Data are reported from 25 suppliers out of 25 and represent 100% of the final non-household customers.

The national territory of the Republic of  Bulgaria.

Natural gas prices data for Bulgaria are available since 2007.

Not applicable.

Prices are reported in national currency (BGN) per GJ. However, Eurostat also calculates and publishes the prices in EURO and PPS (purchasing power parity) and do the conversion to kWh.
Relative shares of sub-component of the network component and consumption volumes are reported in percentages.

For semestrial prices, the reference periods are  January - June for semester 1 and July - December for semester 2.

For annual prices, the reference period is the whole calendar year (January - December). 

At EU level:

• Regulation (EU) 2016/1952 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 October 2016 on European statistics on natural gas and electricity prices and repealing Directive 2008/92/EC (Text with EEA relevance) - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2016/1952/oj
• Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2017/2169 of 21 November 2017 concerning the format and arrangements for the transmission of European Statistics on natural gas and electricity prices pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2016/1952 of the European Parliament and of the Council (Text with EEA relevance) - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32017R2169
• Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2018/1734 of 14 November 2018 granting derogations to the Federal Republic of Germany, the Kingdom of Spain, the Italian Republic and the Republic of Cyprus as regards the provision of statistics pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2016/1952 of the European Parliament and of the Council (notified under document C(2018) 7465) (Text with EEA relevance) - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32018D1734
• Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/803 of 17 May 2019 concerning the content of quality reports on European statistics on natural gas and electricity prices pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2016/1952 of the European Parliament and of the Council (Text with EEA relevance) - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg_impl/2019/803/oj

At National level:

• No legal acts and other agreements at national level.

At EU level:

• Eurostat does not share the data collected with other organisation appart from its usual dissemination chanel (Eurostat's database, statistic explained articles and press or news release) .

At national level:

• Data is submitted to Eurostat.

At EU level:

• Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council, of 11 March 2009, on the transmission of data subject to statistical confidentiality to the Statistical Office of the European Communities.

At national level:

• Law on Statistics of Bulgaria - http://www.nsi.bg/en/content/218/basic-page/law-statistics ; Confidentiality of statistical data is defined in Chapter Six PROTECTION OF SECRECY (Heading amended, SG No. 81/2005).  

Published data do not allow identification of single consumers.

Individual data on prices are not published (they are suppressed), following Art. 25 of the Law on Statistics. Publishing of individual data is made under Art. 26 of the Law on Statistics.

The date for publication of statistical information on prices is listed in the Annual Release Calendar presenting the results of the statistical surveys carried out by the National Statistical Institute. Data on prices of natural gas for household and final non-household customers is published three months after the reporting period according to the requirements of Regulation (EU) 2016/1952 on natural gas end electricity prices.

Release Calendar | National statistical institute (nsi.bg)

According to Article 23 of  the Law on Statistics of Bulgaria "The National Statistical Institute and statistical authorities shall announce to the public the results from the statistical surveys through the mass media, their websites, in own publications or by other means, in compliance with the provisions of Chapter Six." for all users at the same time.

Natural gas prices in Bulgaria are published twice per year at the NSI website - section Energy, Information system "Infostat" and on Eurostat's database.

No national press release related to the data.

No other national publications related to the data.

Online information system "Infostat" at the NSI website - https://infostat.nsi.bg/

No national database related to the number of consultations of these data.

NSI of Bulgaria doesn't give access to microdata related to gas prices.

Information service upon request according to the Rules for dissemination of statistical products and services, published at the following link:

https://www.nsi.bg/en/node/564

Not applicable.

Metadata and methodology files are available at the NSI website, section Statistical data/Energy:

Electricity and natural gas prices | National statistical institute (nsi.bg)

Natural gas prices for final non-household customers | National statistical institute (nsi.bg)

Natural gas prices for household customers | National statistical institute (nsi.bg)

0,9

https://nsi.bg/en/content/4172/electricity-and-natural-gas-prices 

The latest quality report 2018 on the Electricity and Natural Gas prices (for reporting years 2016,2017 and 2018) is published on the NSI's website - section Statistical data/Energy via the above mentioned link.

NSI has developed and implemented Quality Management System (QMS) according to the international standard ISO 9001:2008 since 2015. After several successful certification audits made, NSI is currently certified with ISO 9001:2015 and ISO/IEC 27001:2013.

http://www.nsi.bg/sites/default/files/files/images/Sertification_32639-15-S_ISO9001.pdf

https://www.nsi.bg/sites/default/files/files/images/Sertificat_ISO_27001.pdf

Implementation of the QMS includes: Regulation for QMS, Ordinance for the activity of Quality Council, Procedures, Programme for achieving aims regarding quality, Programme for the activity of Quality Council, Training on QMS, Reports, Audit.

The NSS Quality Assurance framework includes methods and tools that aim to guarantee the compliance with the requirements to the statistical processes and products, and to ensure the required statistical information quality. This information is available at the NSI's website via the link below: 

NSS Quality Assurance framework

Data are with good quality.

No information available for users of these data exactly, as they have free access to NSI website.

No user satisfaction survey has been carried out especially for this dataset.

Data fully meet the requirements of  the Regulation (EU) 2016/1952 - in terms of Annex I.

The ratio of the number of data cells provided to the number of data cells required:

Table 1: 100%

Table 2: 100%

Table 3: 100%

Table 4: 100%

Data are reliable, the accuracy is good. Gas prices data are verified with the decisions of EWRC, determinating natural gas prices and components for the company public supplier and for the natural gas distribution companies. The comparative analyses are made with the data for previous periods.

No sampling used as the data covers 100% of the population.

Not applicable.

Information is included in the sub-concepts S.13.3.1-S.13.3.5.

As 100% of the population is covered by the data, all kinds of unit are represented.

There are no over-coverage in the data.

100% of the data come from the survey.

The responding units and statistical experts are not exempted automatically from errors in reading, calculating and recording the numerical values. As the Excel questionnaire and summary files are not automated, these errors are verified and corrected manually.

0%.

The unit non-response rate is 0%.

The item non-response rate is 0%.

Gas price questionnaire for collecting primary data from the suppliers is Excel formatted. At national level we aggregate manually all data in Summary Excel file where national data (previously checked and verified) are calculated by formulas and that is why no processing errors occurred. We don't use specific tool and calculations are not automated.

Not Applicable.

Natural gas providers that participate in the national data collection are requested to provide the natural gas prices data within one month after the reference period. After submission, NSI experts check the micro-data for correctness, consistency and completeness. National averages are calculated and reported to Eurostat during the third month after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for households for the 1st semester of 2019 was sent 89 days after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for households for the 2nd semester of 2019 was sent 91 days after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for households for the 1st semester of 2020 was sent 92 days after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for households for the 2nd semester of 2020 was sent 90 days after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for households for the 1st semester of 2021 was sent 91 days after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for households for the 2nd semester of 2021 was sent 90 days after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for non-households for the 1st semester of 2019 was sent 89 days after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for non-households for the 2nd semester of 2019 was sent 91 days after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for non-households for the 1st semester of 2020 was sent 92 days after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for non-households for the 2nd semester of 2020 was sent 90 days after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for non-households for the 1st semester of 2021 was sent 91 days after the reference period.

The first version of the natural gas price questionnaire for non-households for the 2nd semester of 2021 was sent 90 days after the reference period.

Version 2 of the natural gas price questionnaire for Non-households for the 2nd semester of 2019 was sent 365 days after the reference period, 365 days after the first version and 456 day(s) after the mandatory deadline. The reason is that after successful negotiations between Bulgargaz EAD and ООО Gazprom Export, on March 2, 2020 was signed an addendum to the contract for the supply of natural gas to Bulgaria. A new mechanism has been agreed for calculating the delivery gas price according to a hybrid formula. With the new pricing formula has been reached a decrease of the gas delivery prices and it was applied retroactively as of August 5, 2019 - the date on which Bulgargas EAD sent to Gazprom Export the request for revision of the gas price. The applying of the new price mechanism led to differences in delivery prices by months for the period August 5, 2019 - March 31, 2020. 

Version 3 of the natural gas price questionnaire for Non-households for the 2nd semester of 2019 was sent 692 days after the reference period, 601 days after the first version and 601 day(s) after the mandatory deadline. The reason for the revision is that in the first version of the questionnaire, in Table 4 “Consumption volumes in %), only data for group 6 were marked as confidential. According to the rules for secondary confidentiality, the cell with the lowest value (for group 1) have to be also marked as confidential in order to avoid disclosing the true confidential value.

Version 2 of the natural gas price questionnaire for Non-households for the 2nd semester of 2020 was sent 326 days after the reference period, 236 days after the first version and 236 day(s) after the mandatory deadline. The reason for the revision is that in the first version of the questionnaire, in Table 4 “Consumption volumes in %), only data for group 6 were marked as confidential. According to the rules for secondary confidentiality, the cell with the lowest value (for group 1) have to be also marked as confidential in order to avoid disclosing the true confidential value.

Version 2 of the natural gas price questionnaire for Households for the 2nd semester of 2019 was sent 456 days after the reference period, 365 days after the first version and 365 day(s) after the mandatory deadline. The reason is that after successful negotiations between Bulgargaz EAD and ООО Gazprom Export, on March 2, 2020 was signed an addendum to the contract for the supply of natural gas to Bulgaria. A new mechanism has been agreed for calculating the delivery gas price according to a hybrid formula. With the new pricing formula has been reached a decrease of the gas delivery prices and it was applied retroactively as of August 5, 2019 - the date on which Bulgargas EAD sent to Gazprom Export the request for revision of the gas price. The applying of the new price mechanism led to differences in delivery prices by months for the period August 5, 2019 - March 31, 2020. 

100% of the questionnaires submitted up to the legal deadline that is the third month after the reference period.

60 days between the delivery/release date of data.

Target date on which data are scheduled for delivery/release:

1st semester - 30th July/30th September

2nd semester - 30th January/30th March

Data are representative at national level and fully correspond with the requirements of the Regulation (EU) 2016/1952.

Not applicable.

Data have been comparable since the 1st semester of 2017.

No break in time series.

Not applicable.

Not applicable

Not applicable

Annual prices are coherent with the semestrial prices.

The amount of costs for Natural gas prices survey is estimated to:

2019 = 2993 EUR

2020 = 9178 EUR

2021 = 9893  EUR

No specific survey on the burden of respondents.

No revision policy is established for the organisation regarding this data.

No planned revisions of data. Unplanned revisions are made in case of detecting different types of errors - tehnical errors, discrepancies with previous periods.

For this reporting period - 2019, 2020 and 2021 years which include 6 (six) reporting semesters, revisions of the data on natural gas prices to end customers have been made for the following reporting semesters for 2 (two) reasons:

* For Non-household customers:
1. Due to the retroactive reduction of the price of natural gas according to signed at state level of addendum to the contract for the supply of natural gas from Russia to Bulgaria that affects some months from already reported period - the second half of 2019.
2. Due to the applying the rule for a secondary confidentiality for the annual data on consumption volumes in percentage by groups.

* For Household customers:
1. Due to the retroactive reduction of the price of natural gas according to signed at state level of addendum to the contract for the supply of natural gas from Russia to Bulgaria that affects some months from already reported period - the second half of 2019.

Taking into account the above, we define the magnitude of the revisions as small.

Households gas prices collection: 0.001579318

Non-households gas prices collection: 0.008938296

Data provided by gas traders (suppliers) delivering natural gas to final customers through mains.

Biannual for the periods  January - June and July - December.

The survey is mandatory according to the annual National Statistical Programme. Data are collected using the  Excel questionnaire by email.

Validation procedures include:

• verification of the coverage of the respondents at regional and national level;
• verification with the decisions of EWRC, determinating natural gas prices and components for the company public supplier and for the natural gas distribution companies.
• comparison of data with ones for previous periods.

Prices are calculated using Excel as a weighted average prices. For the purpose the invoiced quantity of natural gas and its value from each gas supplier by type of final customers and by consumption band are used.

No imputations are performed related to the data.

No adjustments are carried out.

Seasonable adjustments are not carried out.