HELSINKI: Prices of energy products continued declining in the first quarter of 2016 compared with the corresponding quarter of the previous year, according to Statistics Finland’s data. The drop in energy prices has, in particular, been affected by the fall in the world market price of oil, as well as by the decrease in the wholesale price of electricity in the Nordic electricity exchange.
Only the price of hard coal used in heat production increased due to the tax increase that was adopted at the beginning of the year. As a result of the fallen world market price of oil, the prices of oil products imported to Finland decreased in the first quarter of the year to the lowest level seen in the 2010s.
This had also an effect on the consumer prices of liquid fuels. The price of motor gasoline was ten per cent lower and diesel oil 16 per cent lower than one year earlier. Correspondingly, the price of light fuel oil went down by 21 per cent despite tax increases. The tax of hard coal and natural gas used in heat production was raised at the beginning of 2016.
The price of hard coal went up by six per cent year-on-year in the first quarter. The price of natural gas, in turn, has declined with the world market price of oil and was, despite tax increases, 14 per cent lower than one year earlier.
The tax of milled peat in heat production was lowered at the beginning of March and its price declined by six per cent in the first quarter. The price of forest chips went down by three per cent. The drop in prices was now also reflected in the price of district heat that declined by one per cent in January.
The price of wood pellets used by consumers was one per cent lower in February than one year earlier. The monthly average for the system price of the Nordic electricity exchange derived from the sell and buy bids on the exchange was in March EUR 21.92 per megawatt hour, which was 14 per cent lower than a year earlier. Due to electricity transmission restrictions, the Finnish area price was 24 per cent higher in March than the system price, that is, EUR 27.09 per megawatt hour, though falling by eight per cent from one year ago, the statistics show.
The fallen prices in the electricity exchange were most clearly visible in the prices of enterprise and corporate customers, among whom the price was, on average, four per cent lower for small consumers and eight per cent lower for big consumers than one year earlier. Correspondingly, the prices of household customers went down by two per cent, on an average.
