Georgia to buy Azeri gas for USD 120

He said that an agreement was reached with the Azerbaijani side during his visit to Baku on December 25 over the delivery of 1 million cubic meters of gas per day.

"We were asked [by the Azerbaijani side] not to reveal the gas price because of commercial reasons, but because the Azerbaijani side has itself unveiled the price, I can now only confirm that it is USD 120 per 1000 cubic meters," PM Nogaideli said.

PM Nogaideli specified that these 1 million cubic meters per day will not come from the Shah-Deniz field. "This is from Azerbaijani's other sources," he added.

He said that additional Azerbaijani gas will be available for Georgia as soon as technical problems are fixed at drilling wells of Shah-Deniz gas field.

"From January we will continue the delivery of Russian gas and as soon as technical problems are fixed on Shah-Deniz we will reduce and eventually stop importing of Russian gas... Currently we have no information when this problem on the Shah-Deniz field will be fixed," Nogaideli said.

Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom has already contracted with four companies in Georgia to deliver a total of 1.46 billion cubic meters of gas in 2007 for USD 235 per 1000 cubic meters.

PM Nogaideli was speaking at the parliamentary session while presenting a revised draft of the 2007 state budget.

He said that the revision of the initial draft budget became necessary because of additional funding for the Energy Ministry.

Nogaideli said that at least GEL 90 million will be allocated to the Energy Ministry for a credit to gas distributor companies to prevent a swift gas price hike for households in January. Civil Georgia