Official Chisinau hopes gas prices will be lower

The new agreement for the supply of gas that Moldova will sign with Gazprom may bring lower prices. “In the worst case, the price will remain the same,” Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy Valeriu Lazar said in a special meeting of the parliamentary commission on economy, budget and finance, Info-Prim Neo reports. Valeriu Lazar explained why the negotiations were stopped, saying the authorities in Brussels today have discussed the implementation of the third Energy Package and the derogations that Moldova pledges to have in this package. The minister also said that under the agenda agreed in July, all the documents needed for signing the contract with Gazprom were to be prepared until September 30. The Russian company’s vice president Aleksandr Medvedev was expected to come to Chisinau in mid-October. But the negotiations were stopped owing to the third Energy Package. An ordinary meeting of the Ministerial Committee of the Energy Community Treaty was held in Chisinau on October 6, where there was unanimously decided that the member countries will implement the third Energy Package. It is an EU directive of 2009, which provides for the ‘separation’ of the energy market. Thus, the companies that operate the transport network will work independently from those that distribute the gas. Moldova pledged to implement these principles until 2015. “We proposed creating a state-run company that will operate the system, while the transport networks should be under Gazprom’s control,” said Valeriu Lazar. MP Igor Dodon, who is a member of the commission, said that according to his information, the gas prices will not be decreased. “In the best case, there may be a small reduction of US$10-15 from the New Year, but the average price for the next year will be most probably much higher,” he said. The commission’s chairman Veaceslav Ionita said that if the formula for determining the price remains unchanged, the price will anyway decrease. “We want the formula to be correct. Under the current formula, the price of a gigacalorie of coal is lower than of a gigacalorie of gas and this is not normal,” he stated. The contract for the supply of gas with Russia expires on December 31.