There would be an energy crisis this coming winter, Sofia heating company Toplofikatsiya executive director Petko Milevski said as quoted by Dnevnik daily.

According to Milevski, "this winter won't be great fun". "No one could predict the price of natural gas by the end of the year," he said.

Milevski also said that only 38.03 per cent of the customers of Sofia heating company Toplofikatsiya had paid their debts to the company in the first five months of 2008. The debt collection rate in the same period in 2007 was 40.53 per cent, he said.

A failure in a turbine in the thermal power plant Sofia East hindered electric power production, which was the only profitable activity of the company, Milevskim said. The failure resulted from a poor investment programme of the company, which in turn resulted from uncollected debts. It was all a vicious circle which caused Toplofikatsiya to incur debts towards suppliers.

The company owed 55 million leva to the gas supplier Bulgargaz, while it had to receive nearly 300 million leva from debtors.

Toplofikatsiya produced nearly 39 000 MWh more electric power than the year before, which brought four million leva additional income to the company. It also earned 13 million leva form thermal power produced.

Current thermal power was sold for 68 leva per MWh, while its real production price was 85 leva, Milevski said.
According to Milevski, fuel costs accounted for 73 per cent of production costs of thermal power.