Buying natural gas at an average European price would allow Moldova to obtain other advantages in the contract with Gazprom. The statement was made by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy Valeriu Lazar in a talk show onRadio Moldova, Info-Prim Neo reports. He meant the taxes for transporting Russian gas through Moldova. “Until now, Gazprom paid Moldovagaz $2.5 for 100 km transit of 1,000 cubic meters of gas. Beginning with this quarter, they will pay $3. We agreed to review this issue at a later date. If we buy gas at European prices, then we’ll require similar tariffs to be paid for transportation services, so that Moldovagaz could cover its expenses and had some sort of income,” the Deputy Prime Minister said. According to Valeriu Lazar, Moldovagaz’s revenues will be by $10 million higher this year thanks to the 50 cent rise in the price of transportation services. This will allow avoiding inflated costs of gas supplied to domestic consumers. He mentioned that a group of European countries was trying to negotiate with Gazprom a new formula of calculating the gas price and Moldova was one of them. “I must admit our negotiation capacity is far from impressive, but last year we joined the European Energy Community and in 2011 we’ll take over its presidency. This means we’ll negotiate alongside other countries, the European Commission will participate as well and we will use all the available instruments to obtain fair prices,” Lazar said. He thinks that increasing energy efficiency will ease the pressure on prices for end-users. “We import 95% of resources. Nevertheless, we consume a lot. Nothing is done to reduce domestic or industrial consumption of energy. In some countries, only the rooms were people work are heated, not the whole building. Meanwhile, in apartment buildings the simplest efficiency measures would help decrease energy usage by 40% per year,” the Minister of Economy said. Valeriu Lazar voiced hope that a series of renewable energy projects will be launched with European financial assistance during the Moldovan Presidency of the ECC.