| This year's energy crisis begins in the Volga region Only Russia began to forget what the energy crisis was when it broke out with renewed vigor. And in the most progressive regions from the point of view of energy engineers - in Samara and Saratov. RAO UES of Russia claims that the pre-election year is to blame: political forces intend to earn points in the energy sector and are finding all sorts of tricks to prevent the regions from paying for heat. Then the whole chain breaks: the energy sector cannot pay Gazprom, which, in turn, limits the gas pressure at thermal power plants. As a result, entire cities freeze, and at political rallies it is pointed out that the reason for everything is too high tariffs for electricity and heat, which no one is going to pay.
In Samara it is now minus ten on the street and plus ten to fifteen in houses, schools and hospitals. There is no hot water - it is lukewarm. People - as before in Primorye - are starting to turn on electric heaters, because of this, electricity consumption is increasing, and power engineers are afraid that they will soon have to limit kilowatt-hours - otherwise the automation will turn itself off, but that’s all indiscriminately.
The local government owes energy workers about 400 million rubles, but there is nothing to repay the debt with. The fact is that since this year, tariffs in Samara have increased by an average of 25%, however, despite officials’ assertions that this increase has been taken into account in the local budget, there is a shortage of funds to pay for energy resources. According to Samaraenergo’s calculations, the deficit to pay for heat consumption in the city in this year’s budget is 95 million rubles, for electricity consumption - 297 million. And this situation, according to the power engineers, has been going on for six years already - since the current administration of Samara came to power in headed by Georgy Limansky.
Mr. Limansky became mayor in 1996. His election campaign was always based on the slogan “We will not allow housing and communal services reform,” which his predecessor Oleg Sysuev began to implement in the city. And Mr. kept his promise: consumers of utility services began to pay less - at first, generally 11% of the cost, now about 40%. The difference was subsidized by the city budget to power engineers and utilities by attracting loans, on-lending, etc. But this year, according to the Vremya Novostei newspaper, no one gave the city money for these purposes. In particular, Mr. Limansky recently negotiated with the management of the Bank of Moscow, but they were unsuccessful. “Now the mayor has only one hope left - one of the local banks,” says a representative of Samaraenergo, “however, given that this bank belongs to structures, to put it mildly, that oppose Mr. Limansky, he has little chance.”
Meanwhile, electricity payments for the first month and a half of this year amounted to only 67%. Samaraenergo did not pay Mezhregiongaz, and it “closed the valve” - by 30% to the payment level.
There are now two ways out of the situation. First, power engineers end the heating season two weeks earlier, completely turn off hot water from May to September and reduce the overall temperature in the heating network by 10 degrees. Then the city will be able to pay current payments and may even be able to pay off some of the debt. But Samaraenergo claims that such a scenario is unprofitable for them - the company will not be able to earn 540 million rubles. And no one will take such a measure in a pre-election year.
The second option involves increasing utility tariffs and, accordingly, reducing budget subsidies to the population and state employees, as well as attracting financial assistance from the regional budget. However, in the pre-election year, for obvious reasons, it is politically unprofitable for the mayor to increase tariffs for the population. There is only one option left - to ask for help from Governor Konstantin Titov. At yesterday's meeting of the Samara Legislative Assembly, Mr. Limansky demanded that the head of the region “show firmness” in energy tariff policy and abolish the regional energy commission, which makes decisions on increasing tariffs. She, the mayor of Samara pointed out, is to blame for the fact that the city budget cannot cope with increased energy tariffs. In response, Mr. Titov, according to local journalists present at the meeting, only shrugged his shoulders and said that he himself could not liquidate the commission, but the regional prosecutor’s office had already filed a lawsuit regarding the allegedly inflated tariffs, and they just needed to wait for the decision.
A similar situation developed in Saratov. However, local authorities there managed to find a way to “solve” the problems, proposed a year ago by the Ulyanovsk governor Vladimir Shamanov (though not implemented): they began to move residential buildings from the directorates of a single customer (DEZ) to homeowners’ associations (HOA). Thus, all debts to energy workers will remain with DEZ, and life will begin with a clean slate. However, power engineers refused to accept applications for the supply of heat and electricity from homeowners' associations and suspect that it was this circumstance that prompted the leader of the Duma OVR faction, Vyacheslav Volodin, elected from the Saratov region, to talk throughout the country about inflated electricity tariffs.
RAO UES of Russia believes that Samara and Saratov are just the beginning of the problems of the pre-election year. Member of the board of the energy holding Andrei Trapeznikov told the Vremya Novostei newspaper that two problems in the energy sector now overlap: a seasonal reduction in payments from budget organizations (it is associated with the distribution of consumption limits and the “cashout” of budget funds) and the beginning of the Duma election campaign. RAO, according to Mr. Trapeznikov, tried to come to an agreement with Gazprom not to restrict gas supplies, however, firstly, the gas monopolist did not make concessions, and secondly, the energy holding itself does not see this as sense. “It’s not the most plausible thing to take on debts to gas workers in conditions when budgetary enterprises do not pay us,” says Trapeznikov. In his opinion, it is necessary to negotiate on energy supply with the participation of regional authorities. However, they prefer to speak exclusively in the language of politics.
It is possible that administrative reform will force regional heads to take care of providing residents with heat and light. According to the bills currently being considered in the State Duma, mayors and governors are assigned responsibility for the energy security of the regions. However, the final adoption of these bills is still far away. Nikolay GORELOV |
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