Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel chaired a meeting devoted to the region’s cooperation with Itera O&G Company. The meeting was attended by Itera’s Chairman Vladimir Makeev. One of the points on the meeting’s agenda was related to the local consumers’ three-billion-ruble debt. The housing maintenance and utilities services’ debt for natural gas consumption, for instance, has grown by over 1 billion RUR since last fall, the city of Nizhniy Tagil being Itera’s greatest debtor.

The debt issue was initially considered at the Governor’s Social Security Council’s meeting in the fall of 2007 when Eduard Rossel insisted that all the local governments must pay their debts off. It appears, though, that a number of mayors chose to hope that no one will dare deprive the debtors of gas supply in the cold time of the year.

In the end, the Governor asked Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Viktor Koksharov to handle each debtor’s problem personally.