Friday, Mar. 22, 2002. Page 5
Gazprom Strikes Deal to Supply Belgrade
Reuters|
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Serbian gas company NIS-GAS signed a deal with Gazprom on Thursday on gas deliveries for the second and third quarters of this year, a NIS source said. A delegation from Gazprom arrived in Serbia on Wednesday for talks with the government and the country's oil and gas monopoly Naftna Industrija Srbije on further gas deliveries and payment of old debts. "There won't be any problems with gas supply until the end of September as we have signed a new deal with our Russian partner," said the NIS source, who asked not to be named. The source gave no financial details. Gazprom, Serbia's sole gas supplier under a deal struck between Belgrade and Moscow under Slobodan Milosevic's rule, has threatened to halt gas supply several times over unpaid bills. State-owned NIS owed Gazprom $262 million for gas delivered before October 2000, when Milosevic was ousted from power. The debt is now some $251 million, the source said. The debt was accumulated due to the inability of outdated industries to pay for gas deliveries either in cash or in goods, construction work or services, as provided for under the deal. Serbia's reformist government has said it would not allow the gas debt to Russia to accumulate further, demanding that companies pay for gas deliveries in advance. The NIS source said firms were still not paying their gas bills. "But NIS, paying expensive credits at home, is regularly servicing its obligations to Gazprom to secure uninterrupted gas supply for domestic consumers," the source said. In 2001, Serbia and Gazprom had a deal on imports of 1.5 billion cubic metros of gas, 65 percent of which could be paid in goods or services. Under the deal reached with Serbian reformers, the part to be paid in kind was to be phased out.
"If you're looking at a more liberalized market, part of that will involve governments continuing the privatization process. That's still a key factor, even in Western Europe," John Martin, managing director of ABN AMRO's Integrated Energy group for Europe, the Middle East and Africa said in an interview on the sidelines of a gas conference in Amsterdam. Europe's energy market deregulation got a boost last weekend, when EU leaders agreed to open domestic gas and power markets to competition by 2004, although France won concessions to keep its household sector locked up. Many states have also started to privatize utilities, but the process is far from complete, especially in Eastern Europe and Russia, he said. ABN AMRO has been especially active in Russia, where massive gas and oil deposits have created some of the world's largest firms, including Gazprom, which supplies gas to 20 European countries. "One of the key elements of our work in Russia has been to help players like Gazprom become more transparent from a financial perspective. We've been helping reorganize their balance sheet, helping them tap international capital markets, helping them obtain credit ratings," Martin said. |
