INDEPENDENT OPERATOR Energia plans to offer natural gas to small and medium-sized businesses in competition with State-owned player Bord Gáis.

The company, part of the Bahrain-owned Viridian group, already supplies electricity and gas to big industrial users, such as pharmaceutical manufacturers and food processors, where it has 25 per cent of the market.

This week it is launching a campaign to begin recruiting small and medium-sized enterprises in the Republic, including hotels, restaurants or “any business that uses gas”, according to its chief executive Gary Ryan.

Bord Gáis is the only company supplying small and medium-sized businesses with natural gas. The Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) sets the prices it charges. Energia intends offering discounts of 10 per cent on the charges for the gas.

Energia’s move comes a week after its State-owned rival announced that it was entering the domestic electricity market in competition with the ESB.

Energia operates two power plants in Huntstown, Co Dublin, and buys its own natural gas on world markets. Gas is traded as a mix of the commodity itself and financial instruments such as forward contracts for its purchase. Generally, the more an organisation buys the less it costs.

Mr Ryan said yesterday the company has a substantial trading operation, and intended leveraging this to sell the fuel at a discount.

World gas prices have fallen by around two-thirds from the record highs they reached last year. As a result of the dramatic falls in prices, the regulator is expected to cut the prices charged by Bord Gáis over coming months.

Last week, the State company’s chief executive, John Mullins, said that gas prices could fall by up to 25 per cent, depending on the regulator’s decision.