Pipe contracts taken away from middleman – metallurgists get contracts with Gazprom instead of Severny European Pipe Project

The Federal Antimonopoly Service has managed to seriously influence  Gazprom’s buying policy. For the first time in the last six years, not middlemen, but producers won in the monopoly’s tender for pipes supply – they concluded contracts almost for 10 billion rubles. Before tenders were won by traders, mainly by the company Severny European Pipe Project (SETP) of Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, but from April the FAS investigates its and Gazprom’s activity. The margin of pipe producers may increase to 17% without middlemen, but they will face additional expenditures and long payment terms.

Gazprom has acknowledged the Vyksa metallurgic plant (VMZ, a part of OMK), ChTPZ and Izhorsk pipe plant (a part of Severstal) the winners of the tender for large diameter pipes supply to Gazprom transgaz Tomsk – customer of the construction and future operator of the Power of Siberia gas pipeline (length is 4 thousand km, route is Yakutia-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok). According to the protocol of the Gazprom’s tender commission d/d June 7, VMZ won the first lot, proposed to supply 30.59 thousand tons of pipes for 2.332 billion rubles. ChTPZ won the second lot for the same amount and the third and the largest lot was won by the Izhorsk pipe plant that proposed 4.664 billion rubles. But significant decrease of the price didn’t occur: VMZ and ChTPZ proposed just by 3 million less than the limit price, and the Izhorsk pipe plant reduced the price by 6 million rubles.