PMR increases energy exports to Russia, Ukraine

Economic powerhouse: MGRES, the region's largest power plant, can supply a country 10 times the size of Pridnestrovie

DNESTROVSK (Tiraspol Times) - The MGRES Power Plant in Dnestrovsk, PMR, proposes to launch one more generating unit to supply electric energy to Russia, Sergei Syskov, the plant's General Director said.

According to Syskov, at this point two generating units are currently operating. One covers local demand for Pridnestrovie, also known as Transnistria or Transdniester. The other exports electricity to Russia and to the Odessa-area in southern of Ukraine. Exports take place by "daisy-chaining" supplies in a system whereby MGRES actually supplies electricity to the south of Ukraine, while a Ukrainian plant in the north transfers the same volume of electricity, 150 megawatt, to Russia.

However, since Ukraine has enough capacity to take 300 megawatt, MGRES will now launch a third generating unit and double exports. MGRES is the biggest power station in the region, with a total installed capacity of 2,500 MW; easily dwarfing any power plants in Moldova as well as in Southern Ukraine.

The privatized power plant is owned by the Russian energy giant Inter RAO UES who signed the transit contract with Ukrainian power supplier Ukrinterenergo on 26 September 2006.

The electricity state monopoly RAO UES, managed by Anatoli Chubais, is a large local employer and thus supporter of the economy of Pridnestrovie. In 2005, the Russian electricity giant with the help of the intermediary Russo-Belgian company Saint Gidon Invest, privatized from the PMR government the Cuchurgan power plant which was the largest in the territory of the former Moldavian SSR. This single power plant alone provided more than 60% of the electricity needs of the MSSR.

The Dnestrovsk, Cuchurgan, based power plant (MGRES) also used to be one of the main electricity suppliers to the Republic of Moldova. But after a mounting debt which Moldova had trouble paying, the plant stopped supplying power to Moldova at the end of 2005 after negotiations failed to reach agreement on a 30% increase in the price of electricity supplied and failed to work out a reasonable schedule for paying a huge debt owed for past electricity supplies.

Main supplier to Odessa

MGRES is practically the only supplier of electricity to the Odessa area. In March of 2006, MGRES briefly suspended its supply of electricity to the Odessa area in Ukraine. According to the director of the company, Sergei Syskov, the move was maintenance related.
" - The work of MGRES will be temporarily suspended," Saskov told news agency Regnum at the time. "As a result, the Odessa region might for a few months be without electricity, but that is not our fault. It is a problem of the Ukrainian authorities," stressed Saskov.

The government of Moldova responded that "The decision to stop the power station is politically motivated. Its aim is to put pressure on Kiev, which introduced a new customs regime for Transnistrian goods," said a Moldovan spokesman. The move came less than two weeks after a surprise introduction of customs rules which amounted to a trade blockade and which pro-independence forces in Tiraspol characterized as economic warfare.

Since Moldova fought a war with Pridstrovie for dominance of the disputed territory in 1992, it has refused to recognize the effective independence of the more than 500,000 people East of the Dniester river. This territory has traditionally been part of Russia and Ukraine, and has never once belonged to an independent Moldovan state at any time in history. It declared independence in 1990, nearly 17 years ago. Moldova has not recognized this independence and still pursues an old territorial claim despite the fact that historically, the Dniester river is a traditional border between overwhelmingly the Romanian Moldova and the majority Slav Pridnestrovie. (With info from RBC)

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