Petroleum products

Gasoline prices in Bulgaria went up sharply. Only a few months after the massive protests in the autumn that spanned the country for fuel appreciation and after winter's soaring prices, the A 95 gasoline carries record-breaking figures for this year. Since mid-March, the increase has averaged 12 cents per liter. From 2.08 leva on March 14, the mass gasoline now averages 2.20 leva.

Fuel market data for the first two months of this year are raising concern, as demand for gasoline shrank 5.9 percent on an annual basis, while that for diesel was only up 1.4 percent on the January-February period last year.

In 2018, the sale of diesel-powered cars declined throughout the European Union, except in two countries - Bulgaria and Estonia, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association, quoted by Investor.bg.

More than 1,000 tons of poor fuel have been withdrawn from the market this year after inspections by the State Agency for Metrology and Technical Surveillance. The imposed sanctions amount to over BGN 1 mln, bTV announced.

4.4% of the verified fuel during the year had quality deviations. More than 1,500 samples were collected in one third of the country's gas stations.

Mobile customs teams have seized over 51 tonnes of illicit fuel within a week, on three occasions, said the Customs Agency.

The Finance Ministry is improving its supervision of fuel stations in a bid to crack down on rampant tax evasion and fuel smuggling, by forcing businesses to send a report at the end of each working day with the sum of all transactions made via their cash registers.

Since the beginning of the year, petrol prices have gone up by almost 18% and diesel by almost 20%, according to a reference in the Fuello site, which keeps track of fuel prices on a daily basis. According to experts from the Bulgarian Petroleum and Gas Association, the increase in price is normal and no other price rise is expected.

At the moment, the draining of fuel from the shipwreck of Mopang near Sozopol is postponed because of strong wind. In control drilling of one of the tanks, fuel leaked out under high pressure.

Greece's Regulatory Authority for Energy (RAE) reportedly called on the Economy Ministry to impose a nationwide price cap on fuel prices through an automatic activation mechanism during a meeting on Tuesday. The ministry, however, is said to disagree with the move.

The Bloomberg agency (Bloomberg.com) has produced a ranking of countries according to the price of gasoline A-95. Bulgaria has the cheapest but also the most inaccessible fuel in the entire European Union.

The lowest price of gasoline is in the torn-out Venezuela economic crisis