About ten days before the start of the heating season, Aco Ristov, head of the Energy Regulatory Commission (RKE), openly warned that Macedonia faces a "turbulent heating season" if the high price of natural gas on the exchanges holds. The problem is simple arithmetic.

When the RKE set the district heating prices in force since 1 August, gas was calculated at around 40 euros per megawatt-hour. "Today on the exchanges it's already 70-72, and it has been as high as 80," Ristov said. Heating for households has already gone up by an average of 5.96% - and today's gas price isn't included in that calculation at all.

For now the companies that produce and distribute heat don't feel the blow, because they haven't started burning gas yet. "In about ten days the heating season starts, and if the market doesn't calm down, they will certainly ask us to intervene in the calculations," Ristov said. A new calculation, he added, doesn't automatically mean a new price rise. How many times so far has a new calculation ended in a lower heating bill?

The regulator is also considering a change in methodology: tying the gas price to an exchange benchmark, as with petroleum products, instead of calculating it from individual companies' purchase prices. Energy expert Mitko Andreevski warns this is the wrong direction. "Gas should be tied to electricity, not to petroleum products. It's not good for the Energy Regulatory Commission to introduce a regulated gas price, because our market has been liberalised for more than ten years," he says. Regulation, in his view, made sense until 2015, when there was only one supplier.

Andreevski's logic is clear: when there are several suppliers, they should compete over who offers the lower price, and when the price is regulated, the room for competition is much smaller. Tying the price to the exchange is supposed to bring predictability. But it can just as easily become one more channel through which exchange spikes reach the final price.

If the turbulence continues, Ristov says the government will be informed, and he mentioned subsidies or finding an alternative source of gas as possible solutions. A subsidy means citizens pay the difference anyway - just not through the heating bill, but through the budget. Will anyone tell district heating customers how much this winter will cost before the first bill arrives?