Cheapest gas & electricity prices … compare gas electric prices
The announcement by Centrica, parent of British Gas, of a surge in wholesale gas prices means yet more bad news for the beleaguered UK consumer. But the sheer size of the coming hike is coming to come as the real shock. It makes it more important than ever to track down the cheapest gas & electricity prices. I’ve been banging on for a long time on the importance of using price comparison sites such as www.uswitch.com and TheEnergyShop.com to compare gas and electric prices.
I struggle to find positives when Centrica announces that ‘wholesale gas prices for the second half of this year will be double those of a year ago’, especially when the company talks of operating profits for the first half of 2008 being ‘materially lower’ than last year and its determination to ‘take the necessary action to deliver reasonable margins in the retail business’. To translate, that means that you and I will be paying more for our gas so that Centrica can maintain returns to its shareholders. About the only upside to the likelihood of a doubling of retail gas prices in a year (they rose 15% in January 2008 alone) is that price switching offers even greater potential for savings, so ensure that you look for the cheapest gas & electricity prices and switch now.
An interesting side issue is that as well as ‘gas and electricity cheap prices’ we’ve noticed more and more people searching for ‘lpg gas prices’, ‘calor gas prices’ and the like. I’m assuming you can’t ALL be planning camping trips and some people are researching how to get away from mains gas altogether! A nice idea, but when the wholesale price of the stuff is soaring (as a quick look at stock exchange information such as Nymex natural gas prices and indeed crude oil and gas prices generally confirms) there’s not really a way to escape this thing … except to make sure your home is energy efficient and get the best deal you can. On the upside, you could keep an eye on British Gas share prices – if profits increase, so may the dividend to shareholders.
For more see Price Switching, Save Energy, Save Money and British Gas and Hot Air.