The agreement will, according to the Serbian government, be the basis for talks on a contract between Srbijagas and Russian Gazprom regarding the construction of a pipeline and underground storage facility, as well as the Russian oil giant’s potential purchase and development of the state-owned Serbian Oil Industry (NIS). The government stated yesterday that the text of the agreement would be published on its official website as soon as the contract was signed. Both President Boris Tadić and Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica will attend the signing in Moscow. The Serbian delegation also includes Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić, who said yesterday, that signing of the agreement would be a good strategic move.
“Serbia will have another source of gas as well as a main pipeline running through Serbia. It will receive some €200 million a year from the transport of gas. We are now paying Hungary about €100 million a year for using their pipeline. We will have transit and large construction jobs with a total investment of about €1.6 billion (about $2.35 billion), and a great deal of it will remain in Serbia, which means that Serbian companies will receive the work,” Infrastructure Minister Velimir Ilić said.
However, Economy and Regional Development Minister Mladan Dinkić said that the signing of the agreement in Moscow would not solve anything permanently. “What I suggested to my colleagues, the president and the prime minister, was that we should not give Gazprom a majority stake in NIS, that we should negotiate a joint stake in the pipeline and in NIS, and that if the Russians insist on a 51-49 division of the pipeline, we should get a 51-49 share of NIS” he said, adding that Serbia needed to maintain majority ownership of NIS at all costs. “This is not a question of privatization, but an international agreement, and that is why this situation is completely specific,” Dinkić said. (B92)
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