Ukraine has linked the pricing formula for electricity supplied for Crimea to that for electricity sold in the Ukrainian market, but this does not mean that the Crimean price will go up, Crimea's energy minister said.
“The resolution of the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers says the price
at which DTEK Krymenergo [monopoly electricity supplier for Crimea] will
receive electricity must not be lower that the average price in the
electricity market of Ukraine. In other words, the resolution doesn’t
say that the price will be stratospheric,” Sergei Kolobov told Interfax.
Today the average electricity price in Ukraine is practically the
same as what DTEK Krymenergo is charged for electricity it forwards to
Crimean consumers, Kolobov said. “It’s just that another mechanism is
used for forming the price,” he said, adding that in Crimea the price
would change every month depending on the situation in Ukraine’s
electricity market.
The minister denied that the price Crimea’s population is charged
would change. “For ordinary people, the price will remain at the current
level until the end of the transitional period at the earliest,” he
said.
Kolobov said Ukraine provides Crimea with about 6 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year.
Moreover, the Russian government has five options on the table for
building a new electricity supply system for Crimea by 2020, he said.
The option with the best odds of approval is a combined project to
build power plants in Crimea with an aggregate capacity of 700 megawatt
and putting up a transmission line between Crimea and southern Russia’s
Kuban province, the minister said.
