Aontu Councillor Emmet Doyle has demanded that Firmus Energy ‘get their act together’ and lower their prices to consumers.
Derry City and Strabane Council will now contact the company and other domestic gas suppliers following the unanimous approval of the councillors proposal.
Speaking at the Governance and Strategic Planning Committee, the Ballyarnett councillor said:
“I, as I think we all were, was very frustrated with the meeting we had with Firmus.
“I think we have to hold them to account even further and I want to read out something Firmus put out last month on a public statement on the fourth of last month about price rises.
“The quote is ‘low storage levels and a lack of LNG made the market nervous about winter supply levels in the run up to winter 2021/22 contracts starting and this pushed prices up’.
“This morning on Sky News there was a report on gas prices and they have been quoted as being the lowest in 18 months.
“To put that in context, in December 2020 gas was 47p per therm, it’s now less than 2p higher than that against a price of 300p per therm in March 2022 and the prices have not been lowered for domestic customers. It’s absolutely infuriating that this is the case.
“I would like us to write to Firmus to tell them to get their act together and any other companies who offer gas services to tell them to bring their prices down because at this point it can only be described as overt greed.”
Councillor Doyle’s proposal to write to Firmus Gas and other domestic gas companies highlighting the drop in the cost of next day gas market prices and demanding they drop their prices to consumers to reflect market prices passed unanimously.