Russia's State-Controlled Gas Firm Announces Plan to Double Price for Georgia

The state-controlled company Gazprom said Thursday that it wants to more than double the price of natural gas for Russia's southern neighbor Georgia in 2007. The sharp increase, if implemented, is likely to reopen the debate on whether Russia is using its vast energy resources as a political weapon.

The prickly relations between the two countries reached a new low in late September after Georgia arrested four Russian military officers on charges of espionage and, days later, Russia imposed a transportation and communications blockade on the small republic. The officers were released, but Russia has spurned entreaties from the European Union and the United States to lift the blockade.

Relations have also been strained by two breakaway parts of Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which are policed by Russian troops, whom the Georgians accuse of stoking separatism. In the past month, Russia also began the deportation of hundreds of Georgians who officials said were illegally living and working here.

At the start of the year, Gazprom cut off supplies to Ukraine in a price dispute, which affected supplies in Western Europe because gas is routed there through pipes in Ukraine. The shutdown was condemned at the time as an attempt to punish a new pro-Western government that came to power after street protests in the capital, Kiev, swept Viktor Yushchenko into the presidency.

Since the shutdown, a new government regarded as more friendly to Moscow has come to power with Viktor Yanukovich, Yushchenko's former opponent for the presidency, now serving as prime minister. Yanukovich's government recently negotiated a gradual price increase to $130 per 35,300 cubic feet for 2007.