Pipeliners

MOSCOW, March 17 (RIA Novosti) - The Kremlin says the state will keep the pipelines but independent producers will be granted access to them. "The key issue for us is to keep the oil and gas pipes in state ownership," presidential aide Igor Shuvalov told journalists on Wednesday. But "we will pledge to create a regime according to which access to the pipe will be completely transparent" for independent producers, he added. This calls for adopting requisite bills within a year. "The rules of exporting gas and providing it to the pipe should be completely transparent," the presidential aide said. "Gazprom must have the monopoly right to export but [the other] companies should have a transparent mechanism for getting access to the pipe." He assured journalists that the state did not plan to oust private companies from the oil sphere. "The oil industry should be competitive and there must be tough competition on the domestic market," Shuvalov said. He said about the appearance of an oil-producing asset in Gazprom: "To us, this is only an instrument for influencing the energy markets on the global scale and not an attempt to cut short competition on the domestic market." "We are not creating a major company that would produce and transport oil and gas in order to stifle competition among national producers. This is not our goal. We will see that Gazprom shall not replace oil companies," Igor Shuvalov said.