City administrators declared an official end to the Moscow gasoline crisis Thursday, attributing persistent gas lines to hoarding among worried consumers.


A spokesman for Mayor Yury Luzhkov's office said the gas crunch will subside as soon as consumers recognize that the city's distribution system is back to normal. After holding onto Moscow's artificially low gas prices for a week, Luzhkov last Tuesday boosted prices by about 25 percent, promising the crisis would end immediately.


Now that supply has bounced back, demand is the decisive factor, said Igor Zverev, a mayoral spokesman. "I consider that it is completely over," he said. "People are just afraid the situation will repeat itself, so they are buying more."


In the meantime, officials on all levels of government are looking for scapegoats for the shortage, which shut down many of Moscow's 250 gas stations last Monday. Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin said at a press conference yesterday that the entire crisis was a scheme to force Russia to introduce price controls on gasoline, Itar-Tass reported. Such a move would set off an avalanche of similar requests from other industries, he said.


Alexander Korsak, assistant director of the city's transportation and communications department, told the daily Segodnya that the crisis highlighted the city's need for increased competition among oil distributors. Moscow's gasoline distribution remains mostly in the hands of Mos-atokombinat and Mosnefteproyekt, two city-run agencies.