Gazprom weighs renewables as price peg

• Tweet

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, June 7 (UPI) -- Russian energy company Gazprom may consider linking renewable energy to natural gas prices in its long-term contracts, a deputy executive said from Malaysia.

Gazprom ties natural gas prices to oil though some have said that creates a false price scenario. The pegging is a 40-year-old practice that Alexander Medvedev, deputy chief executive officer at Gazprom speaking at a natural gas conference in Kuala Lumpur, said might eventually have alternatives.

"It's time to define ways to improve the system," he was quoted by Bloomberg News as saying. "As a new thing, one could choose a renewable source as an alternative energy resource for indexing prices in the future."

Gazprom meets about 25 percent of the natural gas demand from European consumers. It aims to raise that level to 30 percent and Medvedev suggested the oil index wasn't going away.

"One should be quite cautious with proposals to reject the oil-price indexation," he said.

European leaders aim to break the Russia grip on the regional energy sector by courting alternative suppliers from the Middle East and Central Asia.