Trans Nafta halts gas supplies to Belarus Thursday :: Charter'97 :: News

ZAO Trans Nafta halted supplies of gas to Belarus at 10:00 on Thursday, company management said in a letter to Gazprom Deputy CEO Alexander Ryazanov and OAO Beltransgaz General Director Pyotr Petukh.

The letter said that Trans Nafta, under a contract with OAO Beltransgaz from December 10, 2003, should have supplied 2 billion cubic meters of gas in 2003. The company planned to supply 500 million cubic meters of gas in January and 300 mcm in February.

In line with supplementary agreements, gas supplies in January were increased to 1.26 bcm of gas and supplies of 200 mcm were agreed for February.

"Consequently, Trans Nafta met its obligations to Beltransgaz in full for January-February this year, both in terms of supply volumes and gas prices," the letter said.

At the request of Beltransgaz, Trans Nafta sent the company a supplementary agreement on February 9 for additional supplies of 1 bcm of gas in February at $46.68 per 1,000 cubic meters.

"However, Beltransgaz had not signed this supplementary agreement by 10:00 on February 12," the letter said.

Also, debt of $16.7 million for gas supplied in January has not been paid and prepayment of $9.3 million for February has not been made, for the 200 mcm already supplied.

At the moment only Trans Nafta and Itera are supplying gas to Belarus. Gazprom halted supplies on January 1, 2004. Itera CEO Valery Otchertsov said earlier that Itera may supply 516 mcm of its gas to Belarus in February and future supplies will be possible if Itera buys gas from other independent producers, for example NOVATEK. However, in this case the price for gas will be higher. Itera currently supplies gas to Belarus at $46.7 per 1,000 cubic meters.