Price for Russian gas may amount to 200 dollars this year
- 21.03.2008, 8:33
The Belarusian authorities continue to hope for reviewing of gas prices. Cost of gas purchased from Gazprom will be discussed today on the sidelines of the sitting of the Council of Ministers of the “union state.”
“This issue is not on the agenda, but it will be discussed at a meeting in a narrow circle if scheduled before the sitting,” Alyaksandr Timashenka, spokesman for Belarusian prime minister, said in the interview to “Gazeta.”
First deputy prime minister of Belarus Uladzimir Syamashka stated Minsk willingness to correct gas pricing formula. According to him, the Belarusian government has an intention to restrain price growth connected to oil products quotations. “We are in the process of negotiations now, the Russian side is considering the position of Belarus on correction the formula,” he noted. A ”Gazeta” correspondent learnt from Gazprom that its representatives wouldn’t be present at the meeting.
“We are planning to correct gas price for Belarus for the second quarter of the year in the nearest time. Such correction is conducted every quarter of the year that stipulated in the contract with the Belarusian party” Gazprom’s representative explained. “A rate of correction depends on changing prices for oil products, it is described in the contract, too. What concerns the pricing formula, we see no grounds to review it.”
Meanwhile, Russian gas is currently delivered to Belarus in accordance with the contract, signed at night of 31 December 2006. According to the reached agreements, since the current year gas supplies to Belarus are counted on the basis of equal incomes. It means the gas price for Belarus is determined on the same principle as for gas supplies to Europe. However, due to concession of 50 per cent stake of Beltransgaz Minsk managed to win beneficial conditions for transmission to market pricing. Belarus will buy gas at a discount till 2010 (33 per cent this year, 20 per cent in 2009 and 10 per cent in 2010).
At present the average European gas price amounts to USD 370 per 1,000 cubic meters. But according to Gazprom CEO Aleksei Miller, a mark of USD 400 per 1,000 cubic meters can be reached. So, gas price for Belarus will increase 2.5-fold – from USD 100 per 1,000 cubic meters in 2007 to USD 248-268 this year. It should also be noted that Belarus has a discount in the form of absence of import tax, which is included in the price for other countries, for example, for Poland. In any case, if the Belarusian Council of Ministers doesn’t gain changing pricing rules in accordance with the previously accepted formula, the gas price may amounts to about 200 dollars this year.
As numerous researches demonstrate, the consequences of the gas and oil “wars” were disastrous for the Belarusian economy. So the planned, though gradual, gas prices growth will only aggravate the submarginal state of most of the Belarusian enterprises, and the whole economic situation in the country.