Georgia wishes to pay even less for Azerbaijani gas

Georgia must immediately start talks with Azerbaijan to prevent growth of prices for the gas delivered to the  country, said Georgian Premier at the session of the government yesterday.

“We should keep the current prices for gas delivered to Georgia and we must start talks with Baku,” he added.

He said the Georgian government has already discussed this issue with SOCAR, which representatives “have expressed full readiness to cooperation and achievement of agreements.”

Premier said it is no ruled out that the Georgian government will offer Azerbaijan to postpone or cancel rise in gas prices delivered to the country.

SOCAR Georgia Gas, which is the operator of Azerbaijani gas distribution in the Georgian regions, decided to raise gas prices for the company’s plants from 0.75 to 0.90 lari per 1 cub.m. from March 1, 2015, because of decline of lari rate.

If in early December 2014 1 USD cost 1.74 lari, by early February Georgian currency went down to 1.99.

According to Turan, Georgia imports Azerbaijani gas from the second half of 2014 at three different prices. Social gas is delivered by SOCAR according to the intergovernmental agreement. According to the agreement, on the border gas is sold at the price of $150 per 1000 cub.m. The second category is delivery of SOCAR’s gas at the regional price, which is about $180 per 1000 cub.m. Since the second half of 2013 Shah Deniz consortium has started commercial deliveries to the Georgian market (it sells gas to SOCAR Georgia Gas company( at $200 per 1000 cub.m. The commercial volume of gas export of Shah Deniz consortium to the Georgian market does not exceed one third of total volume of Azerbaijani gas.—0--