The German cartel office said Wednesday it has started an investigation of 35 gas providers on suspicion of improperly inflated natural gas prices for both industrial and private household customers.
The cartel office didn't name companies included in the price probe, but said the list of companies to be investigated includes city, local and regional providers from all regions of Germany, as well as utilities belonging to the four largest utility conglomerates.
The cartel office said a countrywide comparison found price differentials of between 25% and 45%.
The cartel office said the investigation pertains to natural gas supply contracts totalling around 100 billion kilowatts, or roughly 20% of the total German market, which stood at around 480 billion kilowatts in 2006.
Germany's four largest energy providers are E.ON AG (EOA.XE), RWE AG (RWE.XE), Vattenfall Europe AG (VTT.XE) and EnBW Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg AG (EBK.XE).
RWE Energy, the sales and network unit of Essen-based RWE, confirmed it has been notified by the regulator.
"The regulator has launched an investigation against a number of our regional subsidiaries," RWE Energy spokesman Sebastian Ackermann said.
He said the probe was launched into its units Westfalen-Weser-Ems in western Germany, Suewag Energie AG in southern Germany, Rhenag Rheinische Energie AG and four municipal utilities of its Envia unit.
"We're fully cooperating with the cartel office and will provide all the requested information," Ackermann said.
EnBW spokesman Ulrich Schroeder said the company isn't affected by the cartel probe. "We haven't received any notification and have no indication that we're affected by the probe," Schroeder said.
E.ON and Vattenfall Europe are also affected by the cartel offices probe - at least indirectly through Berlin-based gas utility Gasag AG, in which they both hold stakes.
A spokesman for Gasag, in which Vattenfall owns around 31.6% and E.ON's fully-owned Thuega AG owns around 36.9%, said the company has been notified by the cartel office of the investigation, without further elaborating.
His comments clarified an earlier statement that the company hadn't received notification of the probe.
A spokesman for E.ON Energie said couldn't immediately confirm whether or not the company is affected by the investigation, adding the company is trying to identify which of its subsidiaries might be affected.
Vattenfall Europe spokesman Steffen Herrmann said the unit of Sweden's state-controlled Vattenfall Group isn't affected by the antitrust probe. The company is purely an electricity provider, he said.