BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

15/12/2007

Gazprom sets price limit at 119 dollars for Belarus: spokesman

MOSCOW (AFP)

Russian energy giant Gazprom Saturday set a gas price limit for Belarus at 119 dollars (82 euros) per 1,000 cubic meters for the first quarter of 2008, a day after President Vladimir Putin promised Minsk to freeze natural gas costs.

Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kuprianov made the announcement on Echo of Moscow radio, saying it met with the conditions of the contract signed in December 31, 2006.

In comparision, gas prices in the first quarter of this year were at 100 dollars per 1,000 cubic meters.

In late 2006 relations between Moscow and Minsk soured over an sudden increase in gas prices.

Until then the former Soviet state had benefitted from a special price, which had been a key way for Moscow to show support for Belarus's authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko.

Belarus is again on Moscow's good side after Lukashenko, a political pariah in the European Union and the United States, told Putin at a summit Friday that Minsk backed Russia's opposition to US plans to install part of a missile defence shield in eastern Europe.

Putin reassured Lukashenko that Russia would not raise prices for natural gas, also promising there would be no obstacles to delivery of Russian supplies this winter through Belarus to the European Union.

Source:

http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=206951