Gas price for Belarus may reach $288 per 1,000 cubic meters in 2012 - parliamentarian
MINSK. Oct 3 (Interfax) - The gas price for Belarus in 2012 may reach $288 per 1,000 cubic meters.
"While forming the budget, we use the price according to the contract for 2011. However, you all know that the integration coefficient will be applied to us in 2012. The figure $288 is now given [for 2012], but no one knows what the price will be," Alexander Antonenko, chairman of the commission on the budget, finance, and tax policies of the House of Representatives of the Belarusian National Assembly, told reporters in Minsk on Monday.
According to earlier reports, the Belarusian government expects the average gas import price to reach $270 per 1,000 cubic meters in 2011. In 2010, the average gas import price was
$185 per 1,000 cubic meters against $150 in 2009. Thus, the gas price for Belarus will go up 46% in 2011.
According to the government estimation, Belarus will buy gas at a price of $300-$305 per 1,000 cubic meters in the fourth quarter of 2011.
The four years' contract for the supply of gas to Belarus, for which the price reached the average European price this year (minus export duty and the transport component), expires in December 2011.
The Belarusian authorities and Gazprom in September announced that they had generally reached an agreement on the terms of the contract for 2012-2014, which is to be signed in November-December, with regard for the instructions given by the Russian administration to give Belarus an "integration" decreasing coefficient for the gas price.