An Armenian parliamentary inquiry has confirmed that President Serzh Sarkisian’s government secretly subsidized the price of imported Russian natural gas ahead of Armenia’s last parliamentary and presidential elections, opposition lawmakers said on Thursday.
The deputies have been part of an ad hoc commission that was formed by the National Assembly last year to investigate Russian-Armenian gas dealings.
The parliament’s pro-government majority agreed to the multi-partisan inquiry amid an opposition outcry against a gas agreement signed during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s December 2013 visit to Armenia.
Under that deal, the Armenian government ceded its remaining 20 percent stake in the national gas distribution network to Gazprom and granted the Russian gas giant 30-year exclusive rights in the Armenian energy market. That was done in payment for Yerevan’s newly disclosed $300 million debt to Gazprom. The government incurred the debt as a result of effectively subsidizing the increased price of Russian gas from 2011-2013.
Up until the controversial agreement, the government repeatedly denied the price hike. Senior officials in Yerevan argued that the gas tariff for Armenian households remains unchanged.
The parliamentary commission, in which the pro-government and opposition deputies have been equally represented, has spent the past year looking into the matter. It will present its findings to the National Assembly next month.
According to two of its members representing the opposition Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) and Armenian National Congress (HAK), the commission has found documentary evidence of unpublicized Russian-Armenian agreements that gradually raised the gas price from $180 to $270 per thousand cubic meters in 2011-2013. Gazprom cut the price to almost $190 per thousand after Armenia agreed to join the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union in late 2013.
“That was kept secret for a very simple reason: [the Armenian authorities] were very wary of public resentment in the run-up to two elections,” the HAK’s Aram Manukian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service (Azatutyun.am). “They didn’t raise the gas tariffs [for households] because that would have had a very negative impact on the election outcomes.”
Manukian referred to the parliamentary and presidential elections held in May 2012 and February 2013 respectively. Official results of both disputed ballots gave victory to Sarkisian and his Republican Party of Armenia.
Energy and Natural Resources Minister Yervand Zakharian, in office since May 2014, refused to comment on the results of the parliament probe after a weekly cabinet meeting on Thursday.