MOSCOW, June 20 (RIA Novosti) - Unified Energy System [RTS: EESR] has limited the consumption of natural gas at its electric power plants, the Russian electricity monopoly's chief said Tuesday.
"We have introduced large-scale restrictions on natural gas consumption at our electric power plants in June, which has never been the case before," Anatoly Chubais told an international investor conference, but did not give any reasons.
"We have to shift to a backup fuel - fuel oil - but it is too costly for [electricity] generation," he said.
Chubais said UES had agreed a strategy for gas consumption at power plants with natural gas monopoly Gazprom.
"The essence of this strategy [is] an overall growth of gas consumption in the energy industry, with the share of gas in the fuel and energy balance decreasing, and the growth of coal generation outpacing gas generation growth," he said.
Speaking at a news briefing Tuesday, Gazprom Deputy Chairman Alexander Medvedev said that in the past two years, Gazprom had been giving UES "as much gas as they wanted."
A cold spell that hit Russia this past winter showed that many of the country's electric power plants did not have sufficient stocks of alternative fuel, like fuel oil and coal, and were too reliant on gas, he said.
"Gazprom weathered the winter, supplying 6-7 billion cu m of gas more than had been planned," Medvedev said. "Now we have introduced a saving mode and have also returned to a normal fuel regime we had in previous years."
He added that the idea behind the regime was to pump up enough gas into underground storages to provide domestic supplies and exports throughout the coming winter.
