Bulgaria: Antitrust regulator opens cartel investigation against petrol retailers

Bulgaria’s Commission for Protection of Competition said on February 25 that it opened a formal investigation against seven petrol and diesel fuel retailers, who are suspected of entering a price-fixing cartel, as well as a probe against the country sole refinery, which is suspected of abusing its dominant market position on the wholesale market.

The investigations are a result of the regulator’s sector analysis of the petrol retail market in the country, which covered the period from January 1 2012 and June 30 2015.

The retailers covered by the cartel investigation were: Shell Bulgaria (a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell), OMV Bulgaria (owned by Austria’s OMV), Rompetrol Bulgaria (part of Romania’s Rompetrol Group, which is controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-owned oil and gas company KazMunayGas), NIS Petrol (a unit of Naftna Industrija Srbije, which in turn is owned by Russia’s Gazprom Neft), Eco Bulgaria (owned by Greece’s Hellenic Petroleum), Lukoil Bulgaria (the local retail unit of Russian privately-owned oil company Lukoil) and local petrol distributor Petrol.

CPC said that its analysis identified three distinct time intervals in the period covered by its report – in one, retail prices followed closely the trends of import and producer prices, but in the other two, the retail price failed to react to reduced import and producer prices, which could be “the result of anti-competition practices on the retail market”.

Full content: The Sofia Globe

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