Gazprom Marketing & Trading hopes to start supplying power to UK businesses and industrial customers within the next few months. The UK-based arm of Russia’s Gazprom, which currently supplies natural gas to UK commercial users, applied last week to energy regulator Ofgem for a UK electricity supply license. Ofgem is expected to give its consent by early May, when the company will enter into discussions with its customers and offer them an electricity deal. Gazprom M&T spokesman Philip Dewhurst said the company is already gearing up to sell power from its retail operations office in Manchester.

It is in the process of purchasing the IT system of former independent supplier BizzEnergy, which collapsed in November 2008, citing the financial constraints imposed by the credit crunch and an industry dominated by giants. “We’re looking to acquire BizzEnergy’s IT system, which will enable our traders to buy and sell power,” said Dewhurst. “It’s been our ambition to enter the power market for some time, and
we’re doing it organically,” Dewhurst added. Dewhurst said the company currently employed a team of around 30 retail specialists up in Manchester, but would be looking to add power specialists to the team shortly. “We’ll get the license first, then start marketing to our customers. We hope to start supplying power in the next few months,” Dewhurst said. Supplying electricity to business customers marks a change of strategy
for the company, which currently only operates in the UK’s wholesale, rather
than the retail, power market. The company, which is headquartered in Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, has grown rapidly over the past two years in the UK commercial gas market and now boasts 14,000 customers in UK and Ireland, around a 4% market share.

It entered the UK business supply gas market in 2006, when it bought a small supplier called Pennine Natural Gas and has been growing its business organically since then. Gazprom has long declared its intention to enter European power markets. The company already has signed memorandums of understanding for joint ventures to build two new natural gas-fired combined cycle turbine plants in Germany. It does not have any electricity generation in the UK.

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