Russia re-routes gas to Georgia after pipeline blasts - Yahoo! News

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TBILISI (AFP) - Russia is using Azerbaijan's pipelines to supply gas to Georgia until its main natural gas conduit there can be repaired after being devastated by several blasts, Georgian officials said.

Following a decision by Russia's gas giant Gazprom, "the first gas from Azerbaijan reached us at 9:00 pm (1800 GMT)," First Deputy Energy Minister Aleko Khetagurov said in comments broadcast by local television.
Local pipelines would get Russian gas by 5:00 am local time (0200 GMT), Khetagurov added.
Gazprom would transmit an additional three million cubic meters daily to Azerbaijan to keep Georgia supplied, the Interfax news agency reported, quoting Gazprom sources.
The two blasts, which ripped through the Mozdok-Tbilisi gas pipeline in the Russian Caucasus republic of North Ossetia early on Sunday, halted supplies amid freezing temperatures and sparked a war of words between Moscow and Tbilisi.
A third blast in the nearby province of Karachaevo-Cherkessia cut supplies along one of the main electricity cables supplying power from Russia to Georgia, the emergency situations ministry said.
Investigators are treating the gas pipeline blasts as sabotage but not terrorism, after finding fragments of improvised explosive devices at the site, said Sergei Prokopov, a spokesman for Russia's deputy prosecutor general.
Other officials said it could take up to four days to prepare the damage to the gas pipeline and at least a week to fix the power cable.
The explosions unleashed intense recriminations between Georgia and Russia, which have long been at odds over Georgia's breakaway province of South Ossetia, a territory just south of the site of Sunday's explosions.
Relations between the two countries have been especially fraught since President Mikhail Saakashvili swept to power after Georgia's 2003 "rose revolution" declaring a new pro-Western course, including plans to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (
NATO' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> NATO).
Russia on January 1 imposed a near doubling of the prices it charges Georgia for gas, part of its restructuring of gas prices for several ex-Soviet republics.
Saakashvili on Sunday accused Russia of being behind the blasts, which Georgian officials said could leave households without gas as soon as Sunday evening and also disrupt power supplies.
"The explanation we have received from the Russian side is absolutely inadequate and contradictory.... Georgia has been subjected to serious sabotage from the side of the Russian Federation," Saakashvili said.
"We have long heard threats from Russian politicians that we could be left without light and gas... and now this has happened, when Georgia is experiencing its coldest winter," he added.
The Russian foreign ministry hit back, calling Tbilisi's reaction "hysterical and bacchanalian" in a written statement that insisted Moscow was doing all it could to minimize disruption to Georgian consumers.
Extra electricity would be sought from Turkey, Khetagurov said earlier, supplementing power from another Russian power line as well as supplies generated in Georgia and supplies from Armenia.
Both Georgia and Armenia are experiencing cold winters, with temperatures in Georgia expected to fall as low as minus four degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit) in the coming days.
In Armenia officials from the gas distribution utility Armrosgazprom said that stored gas reserves were available, but that supplies to non-essential consumers would be cut.
"Armrosgazprom calls on the population to use gas economically and if necessary to use alternative sources of heat," the company's spokeswoman, Shushan Sardaryan, told AFP.
While Moscow formally recognizes Georgia's border province of South Ossetia as Georgian territory, observers say Moscow has given de facto support to a breakaway government in South Ossetia, which has close ties to North Ossetia.
Meanwhile Armenian President Robert Kocharian arrived in Moscow late Sunday for an Armenian-Russian cultural event and to meet President
Vladimir Putin' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Vladimir Putin.