500 thousand rubles for the "free" gasification of the house: what the officials kept silent about

The other day, Deputy Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin clarified: the gasification time will be halved, and the costs of this process will also decrease. But is it really that easy to carry gas to your site?

Irina Mishina

Gasification of Russia is an equally urgent and mysterious issue. Our country is a recognized world leader in natural gas reserves. In the ranking of countries by the level of natural gas production by OPEC (Annual Statistical Bulletin 2020), Russia ranks second after the United States. At the same time, today's gasification of Russian regions is only 71.4%. The lowest level of gasification is in Siberia, the “storehouse” of natural gas (16.8%) and in the Far East. True, official sources are now announcing far-reaching plans: in 2026 to achieve the country's gasification level of 74.7%, and by 2030 - 82.9%. But there will be no complete gasification of Russia. Where it is not profitable to pull pipes, other sources of energy will be used.

Possessing gigantic gas reserves and an extensive unified gas structure, we still cannot fully gasify the country. “There is a need for this, there is a possibility, in principle, there is, but the interests of private companies, of course, also greatly influence. Recently, the main costs for supplying electricity to the house are taken by the power company: they change the meters, put up the poles. Gazprom should do something similar. But this, of course, does not exist and most likely will not happen: this will be a strong blow to their profits, and of course they do not want this", - says Yuri Rykov, head of the sector of the Energy Department of the Institute of Energy and Finance.

So how will the emergency gasification of the country be carried out? And how free will it be? As explained to Novye Izvestia in the press service of the government, this will happen due to the fact that "citizens will be able to connect to networks faster and at lower costs." According to the deputy. Minister of Energy Pavel Sorokin, gasification will be simplified "due to the creation of a single operator, which will control and be responsible for supplying gas" up to the intake. " Presumably, in most Russian regions this function will be taken over by Gazprom. In turn, Gazprom said that owners of small private houses can count on free connection to gas. We are talking about an area of up to 300 square meters, - explained Sergey Gustov, General Director of Gazprommezhregiongaz.

The promises sound tempting. But the Russians, who suspected that the free state cheese could end in another mousetrap, pelted officials with questions. In social networks, the topic of "free gasification" caused a heated discussion.

Alexander Shashin: “Only the president can speak for free! Gazprom will not miss its own. Not by washing, so by rolling. They will take away one feeder, they will come up with another right there. People make money out of thin air!"

Yuriy Merzlenko: “Gas heating has no disadvantages, except for the grasping reflexes of gas workers. Point".

After heated discussions on the networks , clarifying comments from officials finally began to appear. It follows from them that gas will be supplied free of charge only to the sections of those houses that are located at a distance of no more than 200 meters from the gas pipeline. The area of the house is not a criterion for connecting to a gas pipeline. The press service of the Ministry of Energy also noted that the gasification program has no restrictions on the types of settlements. For example, horticultural non-profit partnerships (SNT) participate in it with the appropriate decision of the regional authorities and the gasification operator in each case. But at the same time, supplying gas "without attracting funds from citizens" for SNT is possible only up to the boundaries of the partnership itself, since the plots are collectively owned, the Ministry of Energy specified. That is, the members of the partnership will have to do the distribution of gas throughout the entire territory of SNT at their own expense. Thus, it is "free" - to carry the pipe only to the borders of households. What's next? Further - all work on gas distribution and equipment connection will be in the area of responsibility of their owners or residents. Consumers are free to choose the equipment they like and connect any additional services, but they will have to pay from their own pockets. The question arises how much it will cost the consumer.

As for the distribution of gas on the site itself, different numbers are given on the forums of summer residents. They differ in the regions. But they have something in common: they are all with three zeros at the end...

Oleg T.: “The connection to gas was 250 thousand. Project, work, plus materials (including the boiler)”.

“270 thousand rubles. This is exactly how much they asked from my friend Maria ONLY for the gas project, which had already passed along the boundary of her site. As a result, Masha considered that only the project, without buying a boiler and other things, would fight back for about 17 years with the difference in the cost of electricity and gas", - writes the author of the blog "Own Home".

...After the pretentious announcement of the president about the "free gasification of Russia" blogger Ilya Valiyev went to help relatives with connecting gas to an urban-type village near Moscow. Here'swhat came of it: “The gas pipe is 5 meters from the gate. At five! House 87 square meters. The company "Gazprom" and their henchmen - a certain heating network - wanted 500 thousand rubles for carrying gas . These are normal requests. Half of the street is not supplied with gas. What Gazprom does is export our Russian gas. And people in Russia do not think about having gas, they are not interested. Only those who are responsible for the gas diversion and connection to the pipe are interested - and they want a lot of money. Moreover, the bargaining is: "Let's get cheaper", - “Well... four hundred”... In conclusion, a certain person responsible for gasification said to the blogger: “Don't you understand that elections are on the way ?! They told you this nonsense upstairs. We don't owe you anything".

But the author of this story, Ilya Valiyev, was still, one might say, lucky. The author of the blog "Own Home" tells an even more dramatic story of gas distribution on his site:

“The year before last, I made a major overhaul in a private house, which also affected the change in the gas project. I spent almost six months preparing the documents. The old gas equipment was dismantled absolutely EVERYTHING and a new one was installed. Boiler, oven, valves, etc. And then an incident happened. When dismantling the equipment, I was issued an act that the gas supply to my house was suspended. And when connecting and commissioning (which were done by their own specialists), I was given new acts of accession, which I took to Mezhrigiongaz. So the act of attaching the gas meter was safely lost there. And there were monthly charges for the tariff (since the counter, although it winds the cubes, but there are no documents for it), which very quickly exceeded five-digit numbers. On my request to write out a new act, I was asked for 16 documents (originals and copies). Land certificate, house certificate, owner's passport, boiler passport, oven passport, receipts for payment for connection and commissioning, all acts and so on. Sixteen !!! .. It seems that he did not restore the act on the gas meter, but received citizenship".

That is, "free gasification", in fact, is a bait for those who do not yet understand all the horrors and scale of gasification of their own section. Which, as it turned out, was the work of the citizens themselves, not the state. We turned to lawyers with a request to comment on the legitimacy of such user costs for gas supply in private plots in private homes. “The condition of running the pipe through its section seems to be quite adequate, since this is already private property and the owner should directly work with it”, - says Mikhail Kogan, head of the analytical research department of the Higher School of Financial Management. The expert does not deny the problems: “Laying the networks can take a long time in those regions where there is no centralized gasification. That is, it definitely exists in cities and urban-type settlements, but carrying it out to remote villages can be a problem both physically and financially".

The main problem is that in a country where the world's main gas suppliers operate, the issue of gasification can and should be solved much cheaper, faster and with better quality.