Natural Gas
Gazprom has a monopoly for the natural gas pipelines and has exclusive right to export natural gas, granted by the Federal Law "On Gas Export", which came into force on 20 July 2006. Gazprom also has control over all gas pipelines leading out of Central Asia, and thus controls their access to the European market. Russia has used Central Asia's gas, primarily that from Turkmenistan, on occasions where it has found itself unable to meet all its delivery obligations from its own production. Such circumstances in 2000 led to Gazprom allowing Turkmenistan to use its pipelines to supply gas to the Russian domestic market leaving Gazprom free to fulfil its obligations towards European customers. Other main natural gas producers in Russia are gas companies Novatek, Itera, Northgas and Rospan, and vertically integrated oil companies Surgutneftegaz, TNK-BP, Rosneft and LUKOIL.
The main export markets of Russian natural gas are the European Union and the CIS. Russia supplies a quarter of the EU gas consumption, mainly via transit trough Ukraine (Soyuz, Brotherhood) and Belarus (Yamal-Europe pipeline). The main importers are Germany (where links were developed as a result of Germany's Ostpolitik during the 1970s, and also Ukraine, Belarus, Italy, Turkey, France and Hungary.
In September 2009, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Russia would try to liberalize the domestic gas market in the near future but would maintain Gazprom's export monopoly in the medium term.
Read more about this topic: Energy Policy Of Russia
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