Журнал Viche 2009 №4

№4, 2009

The gas market from the point of the geopolitical balances.

The gas harvesting enterprises cover 25% of the demand. The main native gas suplier to the internal market is the company “Ukrgazdobuvannia”, the part of which, together with the rest of structures of the “Naftogaz Ukraine” equals to 93% of the harvested gas in the whole state.

The policy of the Russian gas monopolist “Gasprom” of the gaining access to the final consumer on the European market has become stricter for the Ukraine, on the background of reducing the prices for the gas in the European countries.

The process of formation of the costs on the market of natural gas continues to be controlled strictly by the state.

 From the bad experience of the “manual control” this system allowed (comparing to the Central Europe) to keep the control on the internal market and to provide the slow raise of the prices.

Among the countries of the EU was formed two different ways of defining the price for gas. There was used a principal of the resource substitution. First way is in the fixing the price to the cost of the same amount of alternative fuel (coal and oil products). This system may very a lot, even inside of a single state.

 There was declared, that this formula will be followed also by Russian “Gasprom”, while supplying gas to the Western Europe. They will be directed by the average price of the alternative types of fuel in every country.

 The other way defines the price for gas according to the ***** month contracts on the indicative kind of oil on the London or more often on the Rotterdam stock.

The price rate in every state is individual, and it can differ from the average middle-European levels, because it depends on the individual economical conditions:

That’s why the gaining of the universal formula of setting the optimal prices for gas and defining the correct price rate between the consumers is totally impossible.

Roman PODOLETS’