MOSCOW, December 14 (RIA Novosti) - Russia will not supply neighboring Ukraine with natural gas at its original target price of $160 per 1,000 cubic meters, but will charge $220-$230 instead, a senior official with the energy giant said Wednesday.
In a new twist to the bitter dispute, NTV reported that Deputy Chairman of the Gazprom Managing Committee Alexander Medvedev said in Berlin: "Ukraine has virtually missed the moment with its negotiating tactics, and today there can be no talk of [delivering gas] at $160 [per 1,000 cubic meters]."
Medvedev said the market situation had changed. "It is constantly changing," he said. "So today we can only talk about setting prices at the Russia-Ukraine border in line with European prices with account, of course, of transport expenses on Ukrainian territory."
"This will not be the fixed price," he said. "This will be the formula of a price formed on the basis of international regulations, i.e. taking into account prices for competing fuels, fuel oil and diesel fuel. This price formula, an average weighted price for our European consumers brought to the Ukrainian border will imply $220-$230 from January 1."
"Thus, we make the mechanism of gas price formation for Ukraine fully clear and transparent," Medvedev said. He said that beginning in 2006, Gazprom would hold Ukraine to a general gas price formula that would take into account the market situation and real market prices for the basket of oil products.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Ukraine had the economic capability to pay a market price for Russian natural gas.
On Tuesday, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said Gazprom would halt natural gas deliveries to Ukraine if the countries did not reach a compromise by January 1, 2006.
"It would be simply illegal - without a contract, goods cannot be delivered beyond Russia's customs territory," Miller told Russia Today TV, the country's first 24-hour English-language news channel.
Miller stressed that Gazprom would deliver gas to Europe in full, regardless whether a contract was signed with Ukraine.
