On May 22, the economical journalists’ club organized a round table and invited general director of “ArmRusGazard” company, Karen Karapetyan. It was expected that the invited participant of the discussion entitled “the prospects of natural gas field development in Armenia”, would be the head of a monopolistic organization.
The shareholdings of this company are distributed among the Armenian Government (45%), Russian “Gazprom” company (45%) and “Itera” international energetic corporation (10%). The founding capital of this company is the biggest one in Armenia ($280 million), and it places third among the biggest tax-paying companies of Armenia. According to K. Karapetyan, “ArmRusGazard” (ARG) implemented a very good gasification program. “There aren’t such marks (gasification of 70-80% of the total capacity during three years) in any other country. We have invested $60 million during the last three years. At the same time, there isn’t any other country, where gasification responsibility lies on the company supplying gas. Generally this is done by local, federal and governmental organizations”, says head of the ARG. What is the ARG going to do about this? According to the ARG director, the credit payment equal to 40.000 AMD for citizens will not be applied until August 1. The explanation is the following: the number of gas users will grow between the months of October-December and the ARG will not be able to fully meet this demand, that is why they want to do this. “Besides that we have agreed with two banks for providing necessary financial aid to install gas facilities in citizens’ homes, which is the main reason why citizens don’t really use the gas”, says K.Karapetyan. He also assured that they will finish their gasification works in Davitashen, Nor Nork and Malatia-Sebastia communities of Yerevan during the months of June and July.
Currently the underground reserved capacity of this company can store 95 million cubic meters of gas, compared to two years ago when it was 70 million. According to Mr. Karapetyan, their approach to underground reserve capacities has changed. “Whereas before we used to say that we need about 27-30 million dollars to have a 250-270 million cubic meter reserve capacity, now we have decided to invest only 5 million dollars and have a 150 million cubic meter reserve capacity. We don’t think it will be effective to invest 27-30 million because we have another diversified source of gas too. We will make such investments only if it is strategically important in our region”, says the ARG director.
He is disappointed about the fact that the responsibility of handling the gasification services of citizens and their apartments was directly given to the ARG as of November 1. “I think this is an illogical and temporary solution. I think this responsibility could be given to another body, which could control licenses, etc. At the same time, the most surprising thing is that citizens wanted it themselves. I have always said that time will come and people will feel disappointed about our monopolistic position”, said K.Karapetyan.
This happened actually last year, especially in Shirak region, and people died due to lack of necessary heating installations in their apartments. “The problem is that we have to recheck all gas facilities and this can’t be done in a day. For instance, our experience in Ararat Marz shows that there are violations of exploitation rules in 8 families out of each 10. And we can’t oblige these 8 families to reinstall. It will create a big confusion”, said the ARG director. He is also disappointed about another function of their company-heating. “Based on our estimations, it is not effective to invest money in heating now. Today, heating businesses sell their services for 1 kilowatt/h at a price equal to 14-15 dram. As for getting income, they have to sell it at a price equal to 20 dram. And if they fix it at 20 drams, there will be no need for such a business because this is the price they can pay for electricity. The role of the government now is to define right rules of the game. One of the solutions is fixing a special price for gas supply for heating. Either the government should provide subsidy or they should change the prices for these services and fix higher prices for other users”, explained K. Karapetyan.
This is not the only thing the ARG does. The company exports energy as well; this year they have exported energy worth five million dollars to Georgia. They have also carried out reconstruction on part of the Iran-Armenia gas pipeline (22,5 kilometers long). What’s more, the ARG representative thinks that Armenia has extra energetic resources and can take part in the energetic businesses of other countries as well.
Although the company has been getting profit since 2003, Mr. Karapetyan assures that this profit is consolidated. This means that it is not defined which part of that profit comes from the sale of gas and which part from the other services provided by the ARG. He also didn’t forget to mention that people save energy thanks to their company. He made his estimations based on the current prices for energy, diesel oil and wood.