Minsk - Moscow: We no longer want gas at the Smolensk price - we want it at the German price!
Prime Minister of Belarus Sergei Rumas hopes to resume negotiations with his Russian counterpart Mikhail Mishustin, who is recovering from coronavirus.
He stated this to journalists in Minsk today, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Before his illness, we had planned a round of negotiations with him on all issues on the bilateral agenda. I will contact the government apparatus and resume the negotiation process,” Rumas said.
The main topic of the negotiations will be a “fair” gas price, according to Minsk.
“Today we have every reason to show in figures that the price of $127 exceeds the profitability of Gazprom’s supplies to non-CIS countries. Belarusians do not want a preferential price, Belarusians do not want a Russian price, Belarusians want a fair price that provides the same profitability for Gazprom as supplies to other markets. There is no integration discount in the price we are negotiating today,” Rumas points out.
Let us note that at the end of April, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak said that Russia would not revise the gas price for Belarus.
According to the intergovernmental agreement, the gas price formula for Belarus is as follows: gas tariff in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (the lowest gas tariffs in the Russian Federation) + delivery cost from Yamal to the border of Russia and Belarus. According to this formula, the price should be $152 per thousand cubic meters, but in February, President of Belarus Lukashenko negotiated a discount from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Lukashenko demands that the price for Belarus be reduced to $40 per thousand cubic meters, but at the same time does not want to change the “brotherly” contract to a standard European one, linked to prices on the spot market.
It is worth recalling that at the end of last year, the then Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev openly stated that Minsk could talk about reducing prices, but after signing documents on integration with Russia. However, Lukashenko flatly refused to sign them, citing the primacy of Belarusian sovereignty.
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