Chinese contract threatens Gazprom with liberalization of gas market

Vladimir Putin actually has launched a full-scale liberalization of the Russian gas market at the meeting of the Presidential Commission on fuel and energy sectorx yesterday. First he the declared revolutionary proposals of Rosneft’s head Igor Sechin on the access of independent companies to pipeline gas export and the independent construction of infrastructure remained uncontradicted; on the contrary, the President again reminded the need of equal rules of the game for everyone. Even an idea, expressed by the President, which was to sugar the pill for Gazprom –the further capitalization of at least $25 billion to fulfill the contract with China - came, according to the Kommersant, from Igor Sechin.

The future structure of the Russian gas industry became a central topic of the Presidential Commission on fuel and energy sector, which was held in Astrakhan yesterday. As the Kommersant wrote on the eve, the executive secretary of the Commission the Rosneft’s head Igor Sechin had prepared a number of major proposals, not only in respect of the oil and oil products market, but in the first place in respect of gas. And in the trend of the recent two years they were focused on weakening the Gazprom’s position. Key ideas were presented at the meeting of the Commission, which was waited for by the market participants for almost a year, and immediately became public and official - the full meeting was broadcasted live for the first time. The Commission discussed truly the revolutionary ideas of the abolition of the Gazprom’s monopoly to export pipeline gas (for a while, for supplies to the Asia-Pacific region), and opportunity for independent companies to build export pipelines on their own. Until now, these opportunities were mainly discussed by experts, and market participants and officials talked about them only in private conversations.