E.ON Ruhrgas AG, the natural gas arm of German utility E.ON AG (EOA.XE), Tuesday said it intends to expand its product portfolio from Oct. 1.
By increasing the number of natural gas products to eight from four, the company intends to offer its customers more flexibility and offers to handle the associated risks for customers that are purchasing part of their requirements on the open gas market, said Ruhrgas board member Bernhard Reutersberg.
For instance, E.ON Ruhrgas will begin offering a so-called flexible fixed price model that will enable customers to offset higher gas prices if they expect rising oil prices by opting for a fixed price, said Reutersberg, who is designated chief executive of Ruhrgas. German gas prices are linked to the price of crude oil.
When oil prices fall again, customers can switch back to the oil-price linked gas prices, Reutersberg added.
"The oil price link will continue to account for a lions share of our sales models, but we want to offer our customers more flexibility to offset this," Reutersberg said.
Ruhrgas is Germany's largest importer of natural gas and supplies many municipal utilities as well as larger rivals such as RWE AG (RWE.XE) with gas.