BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

01/01/2007

Russia's Gazprom says "absolutely satisfied" with Belarus deal

MOSCOW. Jan 1 (Interfax) - Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom (RTS: GAZP) "is absolutely satisfied" with the agreement to export gas to Belarus signed two minutes before midnight on Sunday, Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said on Monday.

"We would have had no [formal] basis to export gas from January 1," Kupriyanov told Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy. "Therefore we were quite actively urging our Belarussian counterparts to finish negotiations in the outgoing year," he said.

The five-year agreement makes provision for "quite a comfortable period of transition to European prices," he said.

Gazprom is also buying half the capital of Belarussian gas transmission company Beltransgaz as part of the deal and is due to pay $2.5 billion for it in installments over four years.

The price is based on what Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller described earlier on Monday as "the maximum possible valuation" of Beltransgaz - $5 billion. The valuation had been made by the ABN Amro bank.

The agreement sets the gas price for Belarus at $100 per 1,000 cubic meters for 2007 compared with $105 that Gazprom was insisting on before.

The price would rise gradually, reaching the European level by 2011. It would make up 67% of the European price less transmission expenditure in 2008, 80% in 2009, and 90% in 2010, and would reach the European mark in 2011, Miller said.

Source:

http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/0/28.html?id_issue=11656427

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