Kazakh oil minister sees no reason to revise tariff under contract with Rosneft to pump oil to China
ASTANA. Feb 14 (Interfax) - There are no grounds at this time for revising the pricing component of the contract between Rosneft and KazTransOil for the transportation of oil to China, Kazakh Oil and Gas Minister Uzakbai Karabalin said.
"I think there are no grounds for this," Karabalin told Interfax in response to a question as to whether the tariff charged for pumping Russian oil to China would change in light of the recent devaluation of the Kazakh national currency.
"In fact, this is a contract concluded between the business structures KazTransOil and Rosneft, so this [revising the tariff] depends on how they will view this [tenge devaluation]. We do not have the right to interfere in this business now," he said.
Karabalin said earlier that Kazakhstan - due to the devaluation - intended to negotiate with gas suppliers on changing the price for it.
"The thing is that gas contracts were signed in part in the tenge, partially, especially exchange and externally deliveries, in dollars. That is, negotiations need to be conducted now with parties to the contracts," he said.
From sixty to seventy percent of the contracts were done in dollars, he said.
