Filat comments on Kremlin’s gas supply terms

As the Kremlin sees it, only Moldova's withdrawal from the European Energy Community would be good enough a guarantee for the investments made by Russia’s Gazprom in Moldovagaz, Premier Vlad Filat told a program on Prime TV, commenting on the differences in the parties’ approaches towards the issue of Russian gas supplies to Moldova. According to Vlad Filat, Moldova came to the recent discussions in Moscow with a concept for the inter-governmental agreement. The Russian Federation, however, says that the guarantees offered by Moldova do not suffice, and, from their point of view, only the withdrawal from the Energy Community would offer the guarantees requested. “According to the II and III European Energy Packages, to which we are bound as participants in this Energy Community, a company cannot concomitantly engage in three lines of operations: extraction, transportation, and distribution. However, Gazprom is a company which does all three. And this requirement is not limited to separating operations, it also requires separation of ownership. Now, Gazprom poses Moldova one question: how do we guarantee them their investments? For, if separation is involved, they would have to abandon one of the aforementioned lines of operations”, noted Vlad Filat. The Premier mentioned that the visit to Moscow was an important and necessary one. “Regardless of its level of intricacy, a problem can only be solved through communication”, highlighted the Prime Minister. Vlad Filat was on an official visit to Moscow during September 10-12.