Latvenergo plans to reach a 30 percent share of the natural gas market in Latvia this year, Latvenergo’s Chairman of the Board Martins Cakste told LETA in an interview.
Latvenergo has more than doubled the number of its natural gas customers and currently has about 55,000 customers.
“We are moving towards our target of 30 percent of the market, but it is harder than we thought at the beginning,” Cakste said, stressing that he had hoped for more household activity.
“It was not even so much for commercial reasons, but purely from the point of view of public responsibility, knowing that the main gas trader in Latvia was owned by Russia’s Gazprom,” Cakste said in an interview.
The company initially thought that the turnout would be higher because it offers gas from the US and Norway.
“Either the name Latvijas Gaze with the word ‘Latvia’ in it is misleading, or something else… It may be that some people think that the EUR 5-6 they pay for gas per month mean nothing, but I think it is a matter of principle, because the dividends go directly to the company that is financing the war in Ukraine,” Cakste said.
As reported, Latvenergo posted EUR 2.027 billion in turnover in 2023, a 10 percent increase on 2022, while the energy group’s profit grew 90 percent to EUR 350.2 million.
Latvenergo Group is one of the leading energy suppliers in the Baltics operating in electricity and thermal energy generation and trade, natural gas trade and electricity distribution services. Latvenergo is a state-owned company and the shareholder is the Economics Ministry. Latvenergo bonds are traded on the Nasdaq Baltic Bond List.
Source: BNS
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