Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that under the influence of the seasonal factor, consumption of Electricity decreased by 9.4% over the previous quarter to 743 million kWh in the first quarter of 2010, of which consumption by the Business and Public sectors (617 million kWh) dropped by 9.1% and that by Households (126 million kWh) fell by 10.6%. Local generation of Electricity totalled 205 million kWh, up by 13.6% quarter-to-quarter; imports of Electricity decreased by 15.0% to 579 million kWh, bringing its relative importance to total available supply to drop by 5.2 percentage points to 75.0%. Imports of Natural Gas for electricity generation increased substantially by 90.8% from 14.04 million cubic metres in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 26.78 million cubic metres. With persisting low temperature in the first quarter of 2010, consumption of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) increased by 7.2% quarter-to-quarter to 11,488 tonnes, of which consumption by both the Business (7,258 tonnes) and Household (4,159 tonnes) sectors rose by 7.2%. Meanwhile, imports of LPG increased by 10.0% to 12,364 tonnes, with the average price of imports registering an increase of 9.1%. The average price of all types of fuels increased from the previous quarter, with that of Bottled LPG and Unleaded Gasoline rising by 8.1% and 4.9% respectively quarter-to-quarter, and 32.8% and 18.7% respectively year-on-year. At the end of the first quarter, stock of LPG totalled 3,672 tonnes, up by 32.6% quarter-to-quarter; stock of Common Kerosene (246,000 litres) and Fuel Oil (20.79 million litres) increased by 20.4% and 16.0% respectively.
