Russia, Poland sign new gas deal with possible discounts

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Russia and Poland ended a four-year impasse on energy supplies on Friday by signing new gas supply and transit agreements.

Russia and Poland ended a four-year impasse on energy supplies on Friday by signing new gas supply and transit agreements.

Moscow promised Warsaw discounts if it bought more gas, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin said on Friday following a meeting with his Polish colleague Waldemar Pawlak.

"A discount is possible if the volume of gas supplies increases," Sechin said.

Alexander Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russian gas giant Gazprom and head of Gazprom Export, said the new agreements envisaged a flexible discount system for purchases on top of minimum contract volumes.

Pawlak had said Warsaw would only sign the deal if it contained a 10 percent discount on additional volumes.

The new agreement says that Russia will increase supplies to 11 bcm from 2012 until 2022, up from 9.7 bcm in 2010. The transit tariff will be set by EuRoPolGaz, a Russian-Polish joint venture operating the Polish sector of the Yamal - Europe pipeline, which carries gas from the Yamal peninsula to Europe.

The transit agreement runs until 2019 as in the previous contract, but Sechin said the extension of delivery and transit contracts was possible.

"We are looking positively on the possibility of prolonging deliveries and transit in the future," he said.

The European Union, whom Russia supplies with a quarter of its gas needs, had expressed concern that the new Russian-Polish deal would not comply with EU legislation.

"(The agreements) take into account new elements related to EU market regulation," Pawlak said.

The row between Poland and Gazprom started in 2006, when Warsaw wanted to increase the transit tariff on its stretch of the Yamal-Europe pipeline, prompting Gazprom's ire. Gazprom insisted on a rate set by an intergovernmental agreement and filed a suit against Poland, which it won in 2008.

WARSAW, October 29 (RIA Novosti)

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