Medvedev, Gazprom executives to discuss regional gas supply

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will meet with the executives of the OAO Gazprom public joint-stock company on Friday to review the process of installing gas-supply service in the country's regions. Participants in the conference will discuss the gas supply situation, strategy, programmes and problems in gas infrastructure development in the regions,a government press service official told Itar-Tass. Vice-Premier Arkady Dvorkovich, Sergei Novikov, Director of the Federal Tariff Service, officials of relevan ministries and agencies, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, and the governors of some regions will take part in the conference. The Head of Government will als participate in a hook-up conference with the executives of Gazprom's subsidiaries, and pesent State awards to the gas industry workers who will mark their professional holiday on September 1, this year. The provision of Russia's regions with gas is one of priority goals of the socio-economic development of the country. As of January 1, 2006, the indicator was 53.3 percent as the country's average, including 60% in towns and urban-type settlements, and 34.8% in the countryside. As of January 1, 2013, the average level of gas infrastructure development was about 83.1 %, with natural gas accounting for 64.4% and and liquefied hydrocarbon gases for 18.7%. Towns and urban-type settlements are provided with distribution-network gas 70.1% and the countryside -- 53.1 %. Over the past eight years, 1,527 inter-settlement gas pipelines have been built with an aggregate length of 22,000 km, providing gas for 2,953 populated areas, 3,623 boiler-houses, and 600,000 households and apartments. The implementation of Gazprom's gas infrastructure development programme was started in 2001. Beginning from 2005, Gazprom and the administrations of regions began to conclude special agreements, work out and approve joint programmes for gas infrstructure and supply. Time-tables for synchronizing execution of the work in the regions are an integral part of those programmes. Programmes in the regions envisage that Gazprom does work to bring gas supply to populated areas, including the construction of offtake gas pipelines, inter-settlement pipelines, and gas distribution stations. Regional authorities rpepar consumers for receiving gas and build intra-settlement gas pipelines. Within a period from 2005 to 2012, Gazprom allocated about 180 billion roubles for programme for installation of gas supply (33.9 billion roubles are earmarked for 2013). More than 100 billion roubles have been invested in the construction of offtake gas pipelines and gas distribution stations. Funds for the consruction of gas supply facilities are provided for the regions from the Federal budget under Federal purpose-oriented programmes. In 2012, Gazprom completed the construction of 235 inter-settlement gas pipelines with an aggregate length of 3,380 km in 40 constituent entities of the Russian Federation. At thesame time, a number of unresolved problems are persisting in the gas sector. Those problems restrain the pace of gas infrastructure development in the country's regions. Failure by the regions to fulfil obligations to prepare users for receiving gas is a restraining factor as regards the attraction of investments to the regions and to the development of industry; a procedure for joining infrastructure facilities to gas transportation and distribution networks is lacking. The question of a State regulation of the prices of services in the technical maintenance of intra-building gas equipment remains open. The problem of payments for the supplied amount of gas has not been soved in full. Users' overall debt as of August 1, 2013, amounted to 105.7 billion roubles.