Alexei Grivach, Nikolai Gorelov
Gazprom board of directors has decided who will have access to Russia's pipeline network
The fourth meeting of the Gazprom board of directors, chaired by First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, faced a tough task. Leaders of oil and gas companies and senior officials of specialised departments that do not have representatives on Gazprom's board (the Energy Ministry and Federal Anti-Monopoly Service), were invited to discuss providing independent gas producers with non-discriminatory access to Russia's unified gas supply system.
According to Vremya Novostei's sources, it was Mr Zubkov who included this agenda item and invited guests. He was asked to do this by Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who oversees the Commission for Fuel and Energy Complex, ahead of a meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who will consider this issue and make a political decision.
The draft on new non-discriminatory access regulations was introduced to the White House by the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service and the Energy Ministry (see Vremya Novostei from August 28). It seems that Igor Sechin actively supports the improvements. The new regulations will give absolute priority to gas supplies for people, budgetary institutions, and those supplies that go under contracts signed before August 1, 2008. It also means that all of Gazprom's new supply contracts will be implemented on the same standard conditions as other companies, but the monopoly insists on retaining priority access to its own transport system.
A source in the company said that the parties agreed that approval of this document will not be useful, with the main problem being that there are no approved long-term investment prospects for the development of Gazprom's and independent producers' activity, which are synchronised with the expansion of the pipeline network and gas demand. Of course, the monopoly has its own plans, but it does not take the interests of other market players into account. Gazprom proposes coordinating these parameters within the programme for the development of the gas industry through 2030, which was prepared by the Energy Ministry. The draft document will be worked out by the Ministry's working group and will be officially introduced to the White House in a month. As we said before, Gazprom's version of the document does not define a timeframe for providing independent producers with access to the pipeline network. Almost all projects are scheduled to be realised after 2011, and the actual launch dates are not defined.
Gazprom's deputy chairman of the board Valery Golubev delivered the main speech, a source close to one of the council's members said. LUKoil head Vagit Alekperov, Viktor Vekselberg, TNK-BP executive director for gas projects, NOVATEK chairman of the board Leonid Mikhelson, Rosneft first vice-president Sergei Kudryashov (the company's president, Sergei Bogdanchikov, was attending Russian-Chinese intergovernmental meetings), Anatoly Golomolzin, deputy head of the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service, Deputy Energy Minister Stanislav Svetlitsky, and Economic Development Minister and a member of the Gazprom board Elvira Nabiullina also spoke at the meeting.
Mr Alekperov said that access to the unified gas supply system is the main condition of introducing new gas fields and corresponds with Gazprom's long-term strategy. He also spoke for the involvement of LUKoil's Caspian fields, which will start operating in 2012 and produce 14 billion cubic metres a year in 2017.
Viktor Vekselberg described the oil companies' most important problem. He said that if there was no priority access to dry gas (which is produced during the utilisation of associated gas), one should abolish the Government's instructions that stipulate reaching the utilisation of associated gas up to 95% by 2011. At a meeting in Severodvinsk this summer, Prime Minister Putin faulted Gazprom head Alexei Miller for not providing oilfields with access to the pipeline network. The irony is that the draft introduced by the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service and the Energy Ministry does not include priority access to dry gas.
The company said in a statement that its board instructed the management to "continue working on developing the mechanism of non-discriminatory access of independent gas producers to the unified gas supply system with attention to the need for equal gas prices on the domestic and foreign markets, and approve and implement the general programme for the development of the gas industry through 2030." Others must await Mr Putin's decision. Alexei Miller can influence this decision by writing a letter describing the threat to gas security and export obligations, as it was in 2003, when Mikhail Kasyanov's government tried to consider the development of the gas market and liberalisation of access to the gas transport system.
