| But Yulia Tymoshenko will continue to fight Russian oil workers Ukraine, as President Viktor Yushchenko promised to Russian oil workers, has abolished state regulation of prices for petroleum products since yesterday. And although formally the confrontation between oil traders and the Ukrainian authorities has ended, Russian businessmen, apparently, have acquired a sworn enemy in the person of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Yesterday, the head of the Cabinet of Ministers said that she does not regret introducing restrictions. This once again demonstrates that she still intends to rid Ukraine of energy dependence on Russia at any cost. However, Ms. Tymoshenko still has to retain her current chair to achieve this.
This will not be easy to do - the conflict with his former comrade-in-arms on the Maidan, President Viktor Yushchenko, seems to be growing. According to freelance adviser to the Ukrainian President Boris Nemtsov, Ms. Tymoshenko is a talented politician, but “the most real and concrete enemy of Ukrainian statehood,” and “in the near future she will ruin the country,” so the prime minister must be sent into the opposition. “That’s where she belongs, we have to say goodbye to her,” the Lvovskaya Gazeta quotes the adviser as saying in the office of the Moscow Carnegie Center. “Viktor Yushchenko needs to immediately “take away” Ms. Tymoshenko. The horror is that the majority of the current presidential teams have already gone over to her side and today in Ukraine the prosecutor general, the speaker of the Verkhovna Rada and the president have the least power,” echoed center expert Anders Aslund, who gave the main report on the economic situation in Ukraine.
As you know, in mid-April Ukraine introduced regulated prices for petroleum products. Russian oil workers, who occupy two-thirds of this market in the republic and supply it with about 90% of raw materials, said that in such a situation it is unprofitable for them to trade. However, Mrs. Tymoshenko convinced the heads of the Lisichansky (owner - TNK-BP), Kremenchug (Tatneft) and Odessa (LUKOIL) refineries to freeze prices until the beginning of June. The companies agreed, but a gasoline shortage arose in the country in early May. A week ago, Mr. Yushchenko, who had not intervened in the conflict between government and business for a month, met with LUKOIL President Vagit Alekperov and TNK-BP CEO Robert Dudley. Following the conversation, the head of Ukraine blamed the Tymoshenko government for the crisis and promised to abolish state regulation. Let us note that immediately after his election he guaranteed companies market conditions.
Yesterday the President returned to this topic again. “The petroleum products crisis is an artificial crisis, provoked by administrative actions to maintain a certain price position for certain goods. Therefore, I assert that there was no Russian interference and no interference of certain Ukrainian circles in this process. When a certain market position is maintained in the administrative regime, sooner or later a decision has to be made that will be painful for both buyers and the authorities. I am sure that both Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Deputy Prime Minister Nikolai Tomenko have already made these conclusions,” Interfax quotes the president.
However, “professional oppositionist” Yulia Tymoshenko does not intend to give up. Yesterday she said she would comply with the president's deregulation order, but believes the government acted correctly and effectively. “I wouldn’t do anything else. I believe that we worked correctly,” says the prime minister, again alleging a conspiracy among the oil workers. According to her, now prices at Ukrainian refineries are set in a non-market way, since petroleum products “arriving in thousands of tons” from Europe, where wages are higher, raw materials are more expensive and transportation costs are higher, are competitive on the Ukrainian market. True, he forgets to mention that petroleum products began to come from Europe only after Ukraine switched to free prices.
To get rid of Russian influence, Ukraine needs to build another refinery, Ms. Tymoshenko continues to insist. This is despite the fact that the current capacities are designed to process 50 million tons of raw materials, but in fact they are only half loaded, and the construction of a plant, the price of which can reach up to $1 billion, is hardly affordable for the Ukrainian budget now.
However, the prime minister is confident: “We need to build a new plant, focused on any world oil - Caspian, Iranian, Iraqi, Libyan - it doesn’t matter. We are technologically unable to supply any oil to the refineries owned by Russian oil traders - they are unsuitable for this.” In addition, the prime minister expressed the opinion that without the crisis, the government would not have been able to pass through parliament a bill to reduce duties and excise taxes on the import of petroleum products (according to many Ukrainian officials, lobbied by oil workers) and thus demonopolize the market. “We would never have passed this law in parliament, because there are enough oil trader lobbyists there, if there had not been such a crisis in society,” the prime minister believes. Denis REBROV |
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