The Secretary of State for Energy has confirmed that a payment scheme for the small amount of liquid left in returned gas bottles will start this year, but not on a bottle-by-bottle basis.
The government is insisting on moving forward with this lunatic measure that originally made it law that consumers were to be reimbursed for the precise weight of residual gas lying in the bottom of their returned bottles.
The plan now is to set a national average for the amount of residual gas and credit each buyer with a predetermined amount.
In an interview with Antena1 and Jornal de Negócios, the Secretary of State for Energy, Jorge Seguro Sanches, said that law that was passed by the Passos Coelho government, to weigh the gas in the bottom of each and every returned gas bottle, "is not feasible because it is not possible to have a weighing machine at each gas retailer."
The foolishly complicated idea was pushed through by the last government, but instead of scrapping the doomed scheme, the current government carried on, to the irritation of the bottled gas supply industry and the bemusement of consumer groups which saw no clear benefit and suggested an across-the-board gas bottle price reduction instead.
According to Seguro Sanches, his latest measure will move forward this year and it will be up to the Regulator of Energy Services to supervise the collection of average residual gas data at Portugal’s six filling stations. Then the supply industry will be able to make a standard deduction for each bottle sold.
Allied to this refund scheme, in March this year the Economy Minister said that a study by the Competition Authority "will lead to lower bottled gas prices later in 2017."
Manuel Caldeira said that an study by the Authority warned of the lack of competition in the bottle gas market and will lead price reduction measures, as "the government’s objective is the lowering of gas prices."
The study was commissioned by the Ministry of the Economy because for years the price of bottled gas never seemed to move with variations in wholesale gas market price, unlike in Spain where there is more competition.
According to Deco, 2.6 million Portuguese, mostly at the lower end of the income scale, use bottled gas and end up paying around double the bill of someone who has mains gas. Deco claims there are around 300 grammes of gas left in each bottle returned to retailers.
Seguro Sanches also stated that "a large company in the bottled gas market wants to invest €20 million in Portugal," but would not reveal the name of the investor which wants to create a significant network of its own resellers to take advantage of the huge price difference between Portugal and, for example, Spain.
The credit scheme for residual gas in returned bottles was close to being scrapped in January this year because those involved could not be bothered to follow the new laws.
The government said then that it would look at what was involved to untangle this unworkable law and the hope was that the legislation would be removed from the statute book.
Seguro Sanches said in January, that the ‘weighing the gas scheme’ was impractical. He now insists in carrying on, albeit with amendments, rather than scrapping the law which he famously once referred to as ‘a voluntary one.’
Whatever eventually is decided, the law was meant to take effect on January 2016 but the National Authority for the Fuel Market said that it needed to sort out how on earth to regulate the retailers and ensure safety as there was a risk that consumers filled bottles with other liquids to get a refund based on weight.
When the legislation first was proposed, the head of gas supplier, Galp Energia, said "We're still trying to understand some of the issues underlying the legislation and we do not see how some of the measures can be implemented," adding that new law is "technically complex and there are security risks" and that "the legislature must be able to find a common sense solution."
The common sense solution would have been to call it a day, however, the current government is determined to force through a refund scheme rather than simply knocking €1 off each bottle sold.
