Gazprom May Sign Belarus Gas Contracts, Buy Pipeline in December
OAO Gazprom, Russia’s gas export monopoly, plans to sign contracts with Belarus and agree on buying the 50 percent of the national pipeline operator it doesn’t already own in early December.
The terms of the new gas supply and transit contracts will be linked to the Beltransgaz acquisition, the Moscow-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. The current gas agreements expire at the end of this year.
Russia has linked the disbursement of bailout loans to Belarus’s selling $7.5 billion of assets in the next three years. Belarus may need to raise $12 billion by 2013 through asset sales and international loans to stave off economic collapse, Moody’s Investors Service said Aug. 23.
Russia plans to introduce a discount for natural gas supplies to Belarus starting from Jan. 1, contingent on Gazprom gaining control of Belarus’s gas pipeline company, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Aug. 15.
Gazprom and Belarus signed their previous supply contract 2 minutes before midnight on Dec. 31, 2006, after a pricing dispute threatened to disrupt supplies. President Dmitry Medvedev asked Gazprom Chief Executive Officer Alexei Miller on Aug. 15 to avoid a repeat of the situation.
State-controlled Gazprom already owns half of Beltransgaz, paying $2.5 billion to build up its stake from 2007 to 2010.
The Russian-led Eurasian Economic Community has sent $800 million of a pledged $3 billion loan to Belarus and plans to disburse the remainder in five further installments over the next three years.
To contact the reporter on this story: Stephen Bierman in Moscow at sbierman1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Will Kennedy at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net
Rate this Page