Nogaideli: Georgia will receive Azerbaijani gas at price of $120

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Georgia will pay $120 per 1,000 cubic meters of Azerbaijani natural gas, Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli announced at an extraordinary session of the parliament on December 29, where the state budget 2007 was discussed. According to him, since January Georgia will be receiving from Azerbaijan 1 mln cubic meters of gas every day. “The Azeri side asked not to announce the price, but they did sound the price, so I can only confirm it,” Nogaideli announced. At that, the Georgian premier announced that it was not gas from Shah Deniz, “it was another Azerbaijani gas.”

According to him, within January Georgia will have the final information on when delivery of the Azerbaijani gas will start from the Shah Deniz gas field (Baku-Tbilisi-Erzerum gas pipeline) after consequences of an accident at the gas field will be eliminated. “After that we shall reduce and than cease buying the expensive Russian gas,” Nogaideli announced.

At the same time, the prime minister announced that because of problems with delivering gas to the country the budget envisaged spending of additional 120 mln lari to energy sector, however, he did not specify in what form the government would distribute the money among gas distributing companies in order not to raise the gas tariff since January 1. “Until Georgia within the next three months buys Russian gas, the problem should be less painful for distributing companies and population. This is the task we posed,” Nogaideli is quoted as saying by civil.ge.