Medvedev holds meeting on international coop in energy

MOSCOW

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev held a meeting here on Tuesday, devoted to the promotion of international cooperation in energy, including cooperation in the gas sector.

It was held in the context of Russia’s latest proposals to its partners in G-8, G-20, the CIS and EC. The president reported on this initiative for the first time in the course of his recent visit to Finland. The document, which later appeared on the Kremlin official site, was titled: “Conceptual Approach to the New Legal Foundation for International Cooperation in Energy (Goals and Principles)”. 

It notes that the “future more stable model of long-term development requires an up-to-date system of energy supply, adequate to the emerging conditions”, while the present-day system “is unable to prevent and settle conflict situations”.

Therefore, Medvedev has raised the problem of “radically improving the legal foundation of global trade in energy resources” and of drawing up “a new universal internationally bounding juridical document”, the signatories of which should include “all the key producing and exporting nations, all the transitors and consumers (importers) of energy resources, and which should cover all the aspects of global energy interaction”.

Moreover, “a new agreement on guaranteed transit carriages of energy materials and products should be an integral part of the new system of documents”. It should include “a treaty, establishing the procedure of surmounting emergency situations in the given domain”. “The purpose of such an agreement is to guarantee dependable and uninterrupted transit carriages,” the document notes.

Taking part in the Tuesday meeting were Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Kremlin Administration Chief Sergei Naryshkin, Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, Presidential Aide Arkady Dvorkovich, Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko, and “Gazprom” Director Alexei Miller.