ELPE fuels talk on local market
Hellenic Petroleum (ELPE) attributed a draft report by the International Monetary Fund on the local fuel market that was cited on Saturday by the Wall Street Journal to hasty analysis and confusion over the data. The report spoke of a lack of competition in the market that costs Greek consumers more than 1 billion euros a year.
In a statement, ELPE said it had received a copy of the unsigned report and is emphatically ?refuting as unfounded various claims included in it.?
The Greek fuel giant stated that the IMF analyst had used the wrong price for heating oil, which was 367 euros per cubic meter higher than the correct one, as he used September 2012 prices but took out the reduced special consumption tax that only applies during the winter months and is seven times lower than that for diesel.
ELPE insists that local heating oil prices before tax are equal to the European Union average, as is also the case for unleaded gasoline, despite the Greek territorial peculiarities of many mountains and islands, which render fuel transport a challenge.
