OREANDA-NEWS. October 11, 2012. ITERA Oil and Gas Company requests that at discussing the increase of natural gas severance tax, the problem of non-payment for gas on the part of housing and utilities’ services should be included in the agenda, reported the press-centre of ITERA.

As Gennady Skidanov, First Vice-President of ITERA Management Board, stated during the parliamentary hearings in the Federation Council, indebtedness for consumed gas in front of ITERA, which supplies gas to about the whole of the Sverdlovsk Region, population included, is currently within the range of RuR 4 billion.

Principal gas producing assets of ITERA are a 49 per cent shareholding with Purgaz and Sibneftegaz. At that, because a 51 per cent shareholding with Purgaz is owned by Gazprom, natural gas severance tax for Purgaz is doubled this year.

According to G. Skidanov, it was only this year that Purgaz was supposed to reach its cost recovery level. It did not come true, though, because of increased severance tax: the net profit of the enterprise was only a quarter that of expected. He pointed out that should the additional increase of severance tax, as suggested by the Ministry of Finance this May, had been approved, Purgaz would have been in the red by the second half of 2013, while based on the new, mitigated suggestion, it would happen in 2014 or 2015.

It had been reported earlier that natural gas severance tax (which remained unchanged within five years) would have double for Gazprom and companies with Gazprom’s shareholdings of over 50 per cent, in Russia in 2012. For independent producers of gas the tax was increased by the size of inflation rate only (by applying reduced coefficients). However, an additional increase of natural gas severance tax to come into effect in 2013 is currently under discussion.