The communists’ party of the Soviet Union was always trying to make people believe that life in the Soviet Union was a festival. There were a lot of holidays in the Soviet calendar. There were festivals for all professions. And we still keep this calendar in our houses, but we don’t know whether it is a working day or a festival calendar. Two days ago those people that were connected with the “State Security Service” were celebrating their day. But today other people celebrate their day: today it is the day of people working in the energetic field. I don’t mean to hurt anyone, but I think these two days of celebration are not connected to each other by chance. We can come to this conclusion if we pay attention to the fact that Armenian energetic system is under the cover of Russia and the “genesis” of Armenian National Security Service is Russian. Russia, being our main partner in the energetic system, spoiled the mood of Armenians working in this field. A couple of days before their celebration they found out that Russia plans on increasing the gas prices. First of all, they learned about the intention of Russian company “Gasprom” to sell one cubic meter. of gas not for 56 dollars, but for 110 dollars. Then Georgia decided to increase the price for transporting gas through their country as a transit country by five times. Georgia is going to increase the price for transporting gas through their territory from 6 dollars up to 30 dollars. It is strange that there is no representative of our country to take part in the negotiations on the transit price. Russian officials take part in the negotiation process both on their part and on the part of our government. All governmental media representatives mainly publish information one the basis of the information provided by the Russian press. Armenia doesn’t carry out its own politics in this field. And this is not by chance, but a result of the recent “reforms”. When the news about gas price increase appeared in the international press, Armenia didn’t react in a duly manner. Our top management was occupied in the referendum developments. Later, after the referendum was over, they started to make announcements. They all do their best make us sure that we will not feel this increase later. People were impatiently waiting for the energy minister’s announcement regarding this. At last he made an announcement. And there is a concrete answer to the question why they were waiting for his announcement: the main purchaser of gas in Armenia is the energetic system. In 2004 Armenia imported 1,332 billion cubic meters. of gas. And the 40 % (537 million c.m.) out of this capacity was used by the energetic system. About 37 % (550 million c.m.) of gas imported during the first 11 months of 2005 was used by the energetic system too. During these past years the energetic system has used twice more gas than the production system. It is worth to mention that citizens use only the 20 %. It is clear that the price increase will first of all affect the energetic system. It is clear to everyone, besides the energy minister. He said that the price increase would not affect the field so much. “Now there are less power stations in Armenia working with gas”, says the minister. As a matter of fact, he is correct because the capacity of power stations working with gas is less now in comparison with the capacity in the 1990s. It is easy to calculate how much the total price will be increased. But this shouldn’t stop the energy workers from celebrating. And our officials try to make people and businessmen calm down and not to worry about this increase. People think that they do their best to do something not to let the prices increase, even more in case when there haven’t been any official announcements regarding this. We know from Russian sources that they are going to pay the difference of these prices to “Gasprom” and register this sum as public debt in the name of Armenia. We know from our experience that Russia takes their money back till the last cent. And in case of any term and date violations they impose penalties and fees on us. According to the same Russian source, the energetic system of Russia wants to become the owner of our energetic system. According to Russian press “now they want to privatize Vorotan Cascade”. And this is the only power station that belongs to Armenia.
The celebration days of energetic and national security representatives were closely connected to each other. The National Security officials held a meeting, where some of them were given prizes. And approximately the same will be done by energetic officials too. And the other people now have to wait for news from Russia to find out what kind of solutions there are regarding our energetic security in Georgia and Russia. But alas, recently these arrangements reached a deadlock and were stopped.