RUSSIA: Gazprom says gas talks with Belarus not encouraging

Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom said on Saturday (December 30) that its gas pricing talks with Belarus were not encouraging and it was ready for "a critical development", raising fears it could cut off gas to Minsk in two days. "The way the talks are proceeding at this moment prompts us to get ready for a critical development of events," Gazprom's chief spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov told the press conference. Kuprianov said they have plans to invite independent experts to observe gas transit on the territory of Belarus if the contract is not signed on time. We are trying to involve independent international exports to insure the control over the volume of gas transit on the territory of Belarus," he said. Gazprom has threatened to cut gas supplies to Belarus -- one of the transit routes for gas to European consumers -- at 0700 GMT on Jan. 1 unless a contract is signed setting a new pricing structure. Shortly after a new round of talks began in Moscow, Gazprom said the level of the delegation sent by Belarus was too low for any real progress to be made and it demanded Minsk send its top negotiator, first deputy prime minister Vladimir Semashko. In Minsk, a top official of Beltransgas, the national pipeline company, said Semashko would be sent as soon as there was a reply from Gazprom to Belarus's latest demands. Gazprom has said it will not change its latest offer and wants Belarus to pay $105 per 1,000 cubic metres from 2007, up from $46 now. It also wants a share of Belarus pipelines. Beltransgas deputy director Mikhail Puchilo said Minsk wanted any proceeds from a partial sale of the Belarus pipeline to be enough to cover the purchase of Russian gas imports for four years. The previous round of gas talks with Belarus ended abruptly late on Friday after Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said he would not tolerate Russia's "blackmail" and his nation would rather "go into the bunkers but will not surrender". A Belarussian government spokesman said it remained unclear if Semashko would be sent to Moscow for talks with Gazprom. The row with Belarus, hitherto a loyal Kremlin ally even as other ex-Soviet republics sought to move out of Moscow's orbit, is part of a wider drive by Gazprom to bring its prices in the former Soviet Union closer to European levels. The European Commission and Germany have pressed the two sides to reach an agreement quickly to end the dispute out of fear it could have an impact on supplies to European consumers as a similar row with Ukraine did in January 2006. Belarus, compared with Ukraine however, handles only a relatively small amount of Russian gas to Europe.

ITN Source | December 31, 2006

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