MBNK to fight for the right to do gas exchange trading on its floor
MOSCOW. April 24 (Interfax) - Inter-Regional Oil and Gas Complex Exchange (MBNK) will battle for the right to conduct exchange trading in gas on its trading floor, the chairman of the MBNK exchange council and president of Russian Gas Community, Valery Yazev, said at a press conference devoted to the seventh international conference Energy Dialog Russia-EU: Gas Aspect.
"Today or tomorrow I will propose to the head of Gazprom Alexei Miller that gas trading be organized on the MBNK base," Yazev said.
"The subject of hands-on management has proved its inefficiency, when oil companies have driven trading on the SPBMTSB [St. Petersburg International Commodity and Raw Material Exchange]," Yazev said. "Nobody is driving gas [companies] here at this point," he said.
On April 16, after three and a half years of coordination, the government issued a resolution On the Sale of Natural Gas on Commodity Exchanges. This document allows Gazprom to sell gas on commodity exchanges in an amount up to 15 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 20122 and do 17.5 bcm from the following year on, but not more than independent producers are selling on an exchange.
The document also allows Gazprom to sell gas only on commodity exchanges. The gas monopoly has requested an expansion of the physical trade in gas via the electronic trading floor LLC Gazprom Mezhregiongas, arguing that trading in gas outside the dispatching of production and transport is not possible.
