Gazprom Armenia ( hy, Գազպրոմ Արմենիա; russian: Газпром Армения), formerly known as ArmRosGazprom ( hy, ՀայՌուսգազարդ; russian: Армросгазпром), is a subsidiary of the Russian

Gazprom PJSC Gazprom ( rus, Газпром, , ɡɐzˈprom) is a Russian majority state-owned multinational energy corporation headquartered in the Lakhta Center in Saint Petersburg. As of 2019, with sales over $120 billion, it was ranked as the larges ...

company in

Armenia Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ''Ox ...

. It was founded in 1997 as a joint Russian-Armenian

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

pipeline Pipeline may refer to: Electronics, computers and computing * Pipeline (computing), a chain of data-processing stages or a CPU optimization found on ** Instruction pipelining, a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a s ...

project. When it was founded, the Russian state gas monopolist

owned 45% of stock, the Energy Ministry of Armenia 45% and the

ITERA ARETI International Group of Companies is a private energy company headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. ARETI was created by Igor Makarov in 2015 as a result of rebranding of Itera International Group of Companies, which was started in 1992. T ...

company 10%. In 2014, Gazprom became the sole owner of the company and renamed it Gazprom Armenia. Director General of the company is Vardan Harutyunyan. The company operates the gas supply for Armenia's domestic gas market as also

power generation Electricity generation is the process of generating electric power from sources of primary energy. For utilities in the electric power industry, it is the stage prior to its delivery ( transmission, distribution, etc.) to end users or its stor ...

History

In April 2006,

and

signed a contract for 25 years about strategic principles of cooperation in gas and energy projects in the Armenian territory. After this contract Gazprom raised the gas price from the preferential $54 per 1,000 m3 to $110 per 1,000 m3. The price is fixed on this still preferential level until 1 January 2009. To avoid a higher prizes level for natural gas, the Armenian government had to make some concessions that the Iran-Armenia Natural Gas Pipeline and the 5th unit of the

Hrazdan Thermal Power Station Hrazdan Thermal Power Plant (Hrazdan TPP, hy, Հրազդանի ջերմաէլեկտրակայան) is a natural gas-fired power plant in the north-western part of Hrazdan in Armenia. It is one of the largest power plants in Armenia. This power ...

get under control of ARG. Final owner rights must transit till 1 January 2007. As part of the contract,

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

wanted to limit the diameter of the Iran-Armenia Natural Gas Pipeline to 700 mm to prevent the use of the pipeline to transport bigger amounts of gas to other countries like

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

. However, the pipeline was built with the diameter of 1,200 mm. The Hrazdan Thermal Power Stations is the biggest power station of the Armenian energy complex. The incomplete but modern 5th unit should be completed and equipped with gas turbine engine up to 140 MWt. During a visit to

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

at the end of October 2006, Armenia's President

Robert Kocharyan Robert Sedraki Kocharyan ( hy, Ռոբերտ Սեդրակի Քոչարյան ; born 31 August 1954) is an Armenian politician. He served as the President of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic from 1994 to 1997 and Prime Minister of Nagorno-Karabakh from ...

announced, that Gazprom will buy additional ARG-shares and then controls 58% of the companies equity capital. On 27 October 2006 Gazprom's Executive Board approved acquire additional issues of ARG, which is most likely part of April's controversial deal. According to

Karen Karapetyan Karen Vilhelmi Karapetyan ( hy, Կարեն Վիլհելմի Կարապետյան; born 14 August 1963) is an Armenian politician who was Prime Minister of Armenia from September 2016 until April 2018. He was previously Mayor of Yerevan, the capi ...

, Gazprom will pay $118.8 million to have the commanding share of ARG. In January 2014 Gazprom agreed to purchase another 20% of ARG bringing Gazprom's ownership to 100% of the company. The company was renamed Gazprom Armenia. The agreed was signed by Chairman

Alexey Miller Alexey Borisovich Miller (; born 31 January 1962) is a Russian businessman. Miller is the Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors and the Chairman of the Management Committee (CEO) of Russian energy company Gazprom, Russia's largest company ...

(

) and Armenian Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Armen Movsisyan.

Criticism

Since Armenia fully depends on gas import from Russia via Georgia, the Iran-Armenia Natural Gas Pipeline was intended to decrease the dependency on Russia. The 1.1 bcm of gas per year had given Armenia a considerable bargaining power against Gazprom. Critics now say that placing the pipeline under Russian control would only deepen that dependence and that the agreement could be seen as a big geopolitical victory of Russia in the

Transcaucasian The South Caucasus, also known as Transcaucasia or the Transcaucasus, is a geographical region on the border of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, straddling the southern Caucasus Mountains. The South Caucasus roughly corresponds to modern Arme ...

region.

Directors

* Roland Adonts (1997-2001) *

(2001-2010) * Vardan Harutyunyan (2010-2016)

External links

Official website of the company

References

{{Portal, Energy Oil and gas companies of Armenia Natural gas pipeline companies Gazprom subsidiaries