‘Some of our customers (the housing maintenance and utilities services) haven’t paid their bills since 2003,’ the spokesperson for Uralsevergas Oleg Vlasov said to UrBC. Among these debtors are Krasnouralsk Chemical Plant (its debt comes to 139,377,700,000 RUR) and the housing maintenance and utilities unit of Prigorodniy district (Gornouralskiy municipality) with its 41,092,900,000 RUR worth of debts. Gornouralskiy housing unit, with its 13 million RUR worth of debt, hasn’t paid the company anything for 28 months, Degtyarsk-based Biosphere hasn’t been paying for 25 months (and its debt comes to 12.5 million RUR), Prigorodniy housing unit has got more than 12 million RUR worth of debt which has not been paid for 27 months. Ivdel-based Teplovodosnabzheniye has been on the debtors list since 2004.

The total sum of payments Uralsevergas is due to receive has by now reached 1.8 billion RUR, which is thrice the amount of October 2006 (the beginning of the heating season), namely, 650 million. Mr. Vlasov reports no drastic limitations on gas supplies have been imposed so far.