20 Aug 2018 16:14

Transneft thinks dividends should be reflected in tariffs

MOSCOW. Aug 20 (Interfax) - The dividends that Transneft plans to pay ought to be reflected in tariffs, the oil pipeline operator's chief, Nikolai Tokarev, told reporters.

"The regulator should take not just the interests of consumers but also those of infrastructure owners into account," he said.

He said that in the last three years, Transneft had reduced spending on its long-term program by 45 billion-48 billion rubles annually because not everything had been favorable with tariffs. "But we made not very big strides - a year, 18 months, two years at the most - yet we're not making a big tragedy out of it," Tokarev said.

He said the government's order No. 377-r of 2014, according to which Transneft's tariffs in 2018-2020 should be indexed at 90%-100% of the inflation rate, envisages that the company would have sufficient funds for its long-term development program. "Last year we all did the reckoning, that tariffs had to be raised by 21%, but we got 4%. If we take all the coefficients that the Russian Economic Development Ministry is giving us then we see that this year again there will be only a slight adjustment. We very much hope that dividend policy and all our expenditure will also be reflected when tariffs are set, because this is a very sensitive topic for us," Tokarev said.

"We've done all the calculations, we've handed them to the Federal Antimonopoly Service. Soon, as a rule in September, the campaign to get the tariffs reviewed will begin. We'll be hoping that everything will go as planned because if in 2013 we paid 8 billion rubles [in dividends], then last year it was 80 billion rubles, which is unsustainable - this has a major impact on our well-being," he said.

"We've wrapped up our main investment projects and are progressing to a program of capital repairs and overhauls which, financially speaking, should look as follows: we plan to allocate roughly 1 trillion rubles annually in the next four years for the company's long-term development program. The program of reconstruction, modernization, capital repairs, replacing linear sections, fuel depots, equipment will on average be 200 billion rubles per year for these tasks alone. At the same time investment projects will be carried out, but in lesser volumes - we plan to spend around 45 billion rubles a year unless there are surprises regarding tariff regulation," he said.