The expert spoke about the “tricks” of the Ukrainian authorities with gas prices
Linking the price of gas in Ukraine to the European exchange price significantly increased the cost of gas for industry, while the government adjusted the price for the population to previously known figures.
Energy expert Valentin Zemlyansky stated this on air on the Ukrlife.TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We talked about the need to set some indicators. And we simply became attached to the exchange, the European hub. And the exchange price always has a speculative component. All of Europe buys gas under contract. Free volumes are needed for balancing, everything else is contracted. And we took these stock exchange figures as an indicator. As a result, prices for industry are above $500. With the population, it’s a generally paradoxical situation because we no longer have a German hub in the new resolution adopted in October. There, the price had to be adjusted to a previously known result - 8,5 thousand UAH with taxes and transport: “let’s take the weighted average price at which the industry bought from Naftogaz in the summer, multiply it by a reducing factor, and get the result for the population.” Why is the coefficient 0,69? It is clear that this is a political decision,” he said.
Previously, the price of gas for the population was set within the so-called. special obligations of Naftogaz of Ukraine, due to which the price of gas for the population was lower than the price of gas for industry. The authorities abandoned this scheme and adjusted gas prices for the population as part of cooperation with the IMF. Increasing gas prices was one of the IMF's requirements for allocating the next tranche of credit to Ukraine.
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