Lukashenka and Medvedev haven’t agreed on gas price

Belarusian ambassador to Ukraine claims that gas is delivered to Belarus at the old price, while the new price is to be fixed at the meeting of Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Dmitry Medvedev in February in Moscow.

Such a statement has been made by Valyantsin Vyalichka on air of the Ukrainian “5th Channel”.

“Gazprom” owns 25% of Beltransgaz”, said the Belarusian Ambassador to Ukraine. The process of partial privatization of “Beltransgaz” was for 4 years and cost about $5 billion.

“2 large pipelines go through our country, “Yamal-Europe” and “Beltransgaz” network. They bring to Europe more than 50 billion cubic metres of gas. About 33 billion cubic metres are stably flowing through “Yamal-Europe”, and the rest flows through “Beltransgaz” pipeline. Two years ago a decision about partial privatization of “Beltransgaz” 50% of which belongs to “Gazprom” was adopted. It caused lots of puzzlement concerning sale of property then. For today “Gazprom” owns 25% of “Beltransgaz”. It could be said that they are working more intensively,” the Belarusian diplomat noted.

“The process of partial privatization was planned for 4 years and cost about $5 billion. These four years they were paying 12.5% of this sum. The company also makes investments immediately into exploitation of gas pipelines, and load. In connection with the last events which has slowed down gas deliveries, they increased their deliveries by 35 million cubic metres of gas a day,” V. Vyalichka said.

“Today we use prices of the last year, it is $127.9 per 1 thousand cubic metres of gas. Future price is to be defined during the Supreme State Council of the “union state” which is to take place in February. This price is to be set proceeding from the fact that it would be leveled with the European prices in 4 stages until 2011. And the conflict situation arises from the fact that contracts have been signed untimely, which has been changed recently,” V. Vyalichka underlined.

Over the three weeks of the new year the Belarusians haven’t leant the price of the Russian gas. This issue hasn’t been clarified by the so-called gas summit held on January 17 in Moscow, and in which the Belarusian Prime Minister Syarhei Sidorski took part.

At the gas summit, answering the question on gas price for Belarus for 2009, spokesperson of “Gazprom” Sergei Kupriyanov noted that they have “preliminary agreement concerning conditions of the contract”. He explained that middle-term contract is on force, and there was no acute need to sign documents in the end of the last year. “We have understanding with which price conditions we are to work in the future, and it would be possible to tell about them in the near future,” “Gazprom” spokesperson said.

According to earlier reports, the conditions of Russian gas deliveries to Belarus this year had been agreed upon by Dmitry Medvedev and Alyaksandr Lukashenka in the end of December. On December 30 representatives of “Beltransgaz” visited “Gazprom” to discuss all final conditions. But the contract hadn’t been signed, and gas price for Belarus for this year hasn’t been announced.

On January 1, 2009 a representative of “Gazprom” Sergei Kupriyanov stated that gas price for Belarus in the first quarter of 2009 would grow considerably.