The Federal Customs Service indicated Thursday that it was ready to continue its export-duty duel with Gazprom, proposing new rules that could be used to force the gas export monopoly to disclose its pricing for foreign clients.
The changes would base export duties on volumes delivered rather than prices declared by Gazprom, which the customs service argues would increase transparency. The state-run company, however, has said the proposal would decrease its revenue — and as a result, the cash it pays into the federal budget.
The announcement shows that pressure on Gazprom from various government agencies is not yet abating, even as the world's largest gas producer has reguarly proven its resilience to new regulation.
Earlier this month, Gazprom fended off an attempt by the Federal Customs Service to make it declare exact volumes and prices before gas supplies crossed the boarder, winning a favorable government decision after an almost yearlong battle in court.
Last week, Federal Anti-Monopoly Service chief Igor Artemyev said the competition watchdog would rework proposals making it easier for other gas producers to get fair access to Gazprom's sprawling pipeline network, after the gas giant's success in proving that the previous effort was inadequate.
“It's anyone's guess how it will end,” a source at Gazprom Export, the subsidiary handling exports, told The Moscow Times, referring to the latest dispute.
Gazprom now pays a 30 percent duty on the sales price for each of its particular contracts, which are confidential and hard to verify independently, Vladimir Ivin, head of the service's analytical department, said Thursday on the sidelines of a conference.
The customs service wants the payments to be determined by an adjustable duty on volume, similar to how crude oil deliveries are taxed, he said, without specifying the unit of volume or the currency.
The government set the crude export duty at $270.70 per metric ton for February, an amount based on the market prices over the time from mid-December to mid-January.
The service's new proposal, which is being considered in the government, would make collection of gas payments more transparent because customs officials can easily take stock of outbound flows, Ivin said.
“They can report whatever they want,” he said, referring to Gazprom's price statements, Interfax reported. “But they are hard for us to verify. It's easier to measure the volume. There is a gauge for that."
Gazprom said in its fourth-quarter earnings report that a volume-dependent duty, which would apply as the gas crosses the border, would reduce its revenues and what it pays in duties. The company was apparently referring to the fact that it charges a higher price when it hands over gas to the customers at a foreign destination than at the border.
The report also said there was no “objective” way of calculating the size of the duty.
Further complicating the calculation of a volume-based duty, Gazprom said this week that it would take European spot prices into account in contracts with its clients there, breaking from the previous policy of basing export rates exclusively on the price of a basket of oil products with a lag of six to nine months.
The Gazprom Export source said Thursday that customers vary from country to country in how they measure the volume of supplies, which would create confusion for commercial settlements.
“Measurements of one and the same amount of gas in different reference temperatures … may vary by more than 10 percent,” the source said, adding that some European countries measure gas at 0 degrees Celsius, while others operate at 25 degrees Celsius. “That's why it is inaccurate — both from the prospective of commerce and physics — to state that a gauge reading would be comprehensive.”
It would be untenable to determine the size of a duty, measured in rubles or another currency, because — unlike oil — most of the gas in Europe is traded outside exchanges, which makes the price confidential, analysts said.
“Only Gazprom knows the price with 100 percent accuracy,” said Alexander Nazarov, an analyst at the investment company Metropol.
Enforcement of the new way of collecting the duty would likely require the Federal Customs Service to seek disclosure of the sensitive information from Gazprom, said Maxim Moshkov, an analyst at UBS in Moscow.
“It's not a constructive position,” he said. “There are no options but to trust Gazprom.”