OREANDA-NEWS. March 25, 2011. The Government will monitor to oil traders certainly kept the price agreement. The Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov said this at the Cabinet` session, commenting on the situation in the domestic oil market.

"The government is carefully daily monitoring the situation on the oil market in Ukraine and we will continue to strictly monitor so that the agreement between the Government and oil traders were executed", - Mykola Azarov emphasized.

He said all efforts should be directed, primarily, that to separate the objective component, which is associated with higher oil prices in the world from unfair extra price. For this, said Mykola Azarov, today will be a regular meeting of the expert-analytical group at the Ministry of Energy and coal industries in consideration of which will be issued the main question: how to respond to changing global situation and oil prices.

However, the Prime Minister said that despite the decision of the previous meeting of the group - set the highest prices for Petrol A-95 within 9.50 UAH - speculation by owners of individual retailers in our country continues.

He recalled that yesterday AMC established hard core collusion of the operators in the national oil market. In particular, the Antimonopoly Committee imposed a fine of 1% of the proceeds to “Continent Oil Trade” (trade mark WOG), Ltd. “Alliance Holding” (trade mark of Shell), and “Occo Oil” (Halnaftohaz). The total amount of fines imposed on these companies, reached 200 million UAH.

“Thus, the fact of price collusion in the oil market of Ukraine was objectively proven. Therefore, we will talk tough. Nowhere in the world, there are no extra charges for fuel, as it is in Ukraine. If traders require European working conditions, we would provide them. Let us start with bringing into line with European standards of the commercial margin. Markup for the ton of oil products in Europe in 2010 was 140 USD, and in Ukraine -177 USD / ton. That means, stock returns for traders make about 95 UAH per litre of gasoline. Do not mislead people, scaring them with rising world prices. They have not grown so as the profits of unscrupulous traders” said Mykola Azarov.

Focusing the Ministry of Energy and coal industries, PM told that he has instructed to increase oil refining owned by companies of “Naftogaz” system, on domestic refineries to saturate the market with additional volumes of oil products and providing agrarians with fuel at a reasonable price for sowing.