Russia refuses to unify tariffs for gas transportation and regulate underground gas storage facilities

MOSCOW. Dec 4 (Interfax) - The government has refused to unify tariffs for gas transportation and underground storage for Gazprom and independent producers.

On November 30, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed order N3438-r, which excludes the corresponding clause (102) from the action plan for the implementation of the Energy Strategy of the Russian Federation for the period through 2035. The document was published on the Official Internet Portal of Legal Information.

The clause had provided for "improving the methodology for calculating tariffs for gas transportation services via main gas pipelines and the legal regulation of relations involving the provision of gas storage services in underground storage facilities, taking into consideration the need to increase the transparency of calculations, apply uniform approaches for all gas suppliers and increase the efficiency of the gas transmission system."

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) was appointed in charge of its implementation. The deadline expired in October 2021. In 2019, FAS was also supposed to draft rules for non-discriminatory access to underground storage services, which also were not adopted.

ES-2035 was approved in June 2020. A year later, an action plan for its implementation was adopted. Government agencies are currently developing a draft energy strategy through 2050

Gazprom opposed the introduction of regulation of the operation of underground storage facilities, since underground gas storage facilities are the main regulator for covering uneven consumption, and Gazprom bears the main burden of covering uneven seasonal consumption in the country.

In particular, in 2018, during discussion of the ES-2035 project, Nikolai Kislenko, deputy head of the concern's department, and general director of NIIgazekonomika LLC, wrote: "Independent gas producers have recently been increasingly trying to torpedo the factors underlying the country's energy security. These are gas transport proposals for the division of Gazprom, liberalization of pipeline gas exports, regulation of access to underground gas storage facilities. If these proposals are accepted, not only will the reliability of energy supply to Russian consumers and, in general, the level of energy security of the country decrease, but so will the stability of budget revenues and the preservation of gas supplies to foreign consumers within the framework of intergovernmental agreements, as well as the development of Russian energy in general. The implementation of these initiatives could actually lead to the collapse of the gas industry."

The tariff for transporting gas from independent producers was last raised since July 2015, by 2%. In subsequent years, independent producers, who were completely in favor of reducing the tariff, managed to block its indexation.