Wednesday, May 09, 2012 -
Kazakhstan is trying to gain agreement from Kyrgyzstan on payment for an outstanding gas bill of $31.2 million, the head of Kazakh state gas transportation company KazTransGas said on Tuesday.
“We have suggested raising the tariff as a way of enabling [Kyrgyzstan] to pay off the debt within five to seven years. There has been no answer yet,” said the firm’s director general Nurboi Sultan, the Tengrinews.kz news agency reported.
Kyrgyzstan’s national gas company Kyrgyzgas last week promised to pay off most of the debt by May 25, he said.
But KazTransGas is waiting for a response to its counterproposal that the unpaid amount should be spread out over the next few years as a special tariff added to the price of gas, he said.
The debt is outstanding from a gas supply contract that expired on April 30 along with an earlier small gas debt from the period from 2003 to 2005, the Kabar.kg news agency reported.
“KazTransGas had demanded the debt was paid before May 1, 2012…. We notified the Kyrgyz side that in case the debt isn’t paid off, we will suspend gas supplies starting from May 1,” said Sultan.
Kyrgyzstan imports 89 percent of the fuel it uses, Energy Minister Askarbek Shadiev said on Wednesday.