RUSSIAN PETROLEUM PRICES TO JUMP BY YEAREND '93
Russia's Minister of Fuel and Energy Yuri Shafranik expects the republic's petroleum product prices to more than triple and electricity prices to quadruple by yearend.
Ministry officials believe the price hikes will help relieve the negative balance of payments in the fuel and energy sector.
The Moscow business weekly Commersant said Russian fuel and energy producers had accumulated 4.7 billion rubles in debts by June, and the figure is rising rapidly.
Commersant said, "In the past few months alone, interenterprise debts in the fuel and energy industry jumped by 1 billion rubles. According to the Central Bank, arrears on bank loans by fuel and energy enterprises grew more than tenfold in 1993's first quarter alone."
Commersant also reported that as of July 1 the Central Bank and Ministry of Finance stopped granting credits to Russian industries, including the oil, gas, and electrical power generating sectors.
EXPORTS STATUS
Russia's oil transport agency Transneft recently stopped exports of oil produced by 40 joint ventures operating in the republic's petroleum sector (OGJ, June 21, Newsletter). Amid charges that some petroleum industry JVs were exporting oil they did not produce, the ministries of fuel and energy and economics jointly decided to review the activities of such enterprises.
Commersant said this means the fate of other oil industry JVs will be decided only after the investigation is concluded. Yuri Sipovsky, Transneft director for commodity and commercial activities, said verification of the firms' accounts and other aspects of their activities would be completed shortly.
"If suspicions of illegal conduct are not confirmed, no obstacles will be erected to prevent the JVs' access to main export pipelines. But if the allegations prove to be well founded, the fate of oil exports by the guilty JVs will rest in the hands of the Ministry of Economics and Ministry of Fuel and Energy.
Vice Premier Oleg Lobov told a press conference that Russia intends to reduce the number of exporters of crude and refined products. He said many enterprises and organizations having energy export licenses sell their resources on the foreign market at prices below the world average.
Copyright 1993 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.