Minsk and Moscow are both waiting for the end of today’s negotiations with interest

Negotiations in Moscow over gas supplies in 2007 continue between representatives of Gazprom and Belarusian delegation headed by Belarusian deputy minister of energy Eduard Taupianiets continue for already 3 hours. This round of negotiations is so much important that the majority of Gazprom top-managers stayed in company’s Namyotkin Street headquarters to wait for Belarusian delegation to arrive.

As the official Gazprom’s representative Sergei Kupriyanov told “Ekho Moskvy” radio, they even cancelled the corporative New Year celebration because of Belarusians’ arrival.

And though nobody is expecting Belarusian negotiators just to “naively” agree with conditions offered by Gazprom today, everybody in gas business is alarmed by one question: “What has Mr. Taupianiets brought?”

We should explain here that the news itself about Taupianiets heading Belarusian delegation aroused Russian expert community’s interest and Gazpom’s top-managers’ amazement. Because the question itself “What has he brought?” would be more correct to be settled this way: “Whom and how much will he offer?” In fact, the whole point is in the head of Bealrusian delegation.

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Is it possible to buy Gazprom top-managers?

As Russian energy “veterans” told us, Mr. Taupianiets was the main Belarusian “gasman” before president Lukashenka, is in this position now and will mostly possible occupy this position under his successors.

“Eduard Taupianiets is the most qualified professional in Belarusian gas field”—that is the characteristic given by Russian energy expert. Moreover, Taupianiets enjoys Russian gas field representatives’ confidence and therefore repeatedly solved gas problems for Lukashenka using his personal contacts.

Upon his words, official Minsk’s decision to send Taupianiets to Moscow is an evidence of Minsk’s decision to persuade Gazprom to supply gas to Belarus using some “corrupt scheme”. What is this scheme about? One can only guess from the word “kickbacks” which explicitly sounded during conversation. That is why the results of these negotiations are expected both in Moscow and Minsk with the big interest because these results can answer one question: “Is it possible to buy Gazprom top-managers?”