Kazakhstan Government will adjust oil prices for Customs Union

Kazakhstan Oil and Gas Ministry has asked the Government to develop adequate oil pricing policies. According to Oil and Gas Minister Sauat Mynbayev, Kazakhstan has to decide on how to work in the Custom Union market that has no borders, Tengrinews.kz reports. “Serik Akhmetov, we have to finally decide: we have no borders and no customs points between Russia and Kazakhstan. The price gap should not be large in such conditions. Otherwise it turns out that we are importing oil products that we compensate with oil and then we export part of the imported diesel. So we are losing three times here. We need some adequate and realistic pricing policy for oil products, as we don’t have the borders anymore,” Sauat Mynbayev said at the meeting. According to the Minister, the Agency on Natural Monopolies Regulations understands this problem very well. The Minister reminded that there were rules for setting retail prices in 2012. Thanks to that, according to him, it was possible to smooth out the spikes of oil prices in the world, especially those that happened during the seasonal consumption peaks. “But practice shows that such tools should be used carefully, otherwise we can face a shortages. Import is commercial supplies and nobody will make them at their loss. We should consider the economy of these supplies when setting the ceiling prices at the local market. Unfortunately, in certain periods the price gap was so significant that we saw reverse export of diesel fuel to Russia, which caused a partial deficit, e.g. in Pavlodar oblast,” Mynbayev said. By Gulnara Zhandagulova