STRELNA (near St. Petersburg) - The market sets the price for Russian natural gas and not the Kremlin, President Vladimir Putin said Sunday.
"We have seen the end of the time when we set prices for our partners," Putin told a news conference on the second day of the G8 summit. "The market now determines everything."
"I cannot imagine a more transparent mechanism," he said.
He also said that the more stability there was in the energy sphere, the more stable prices would be.
He said that fighting in the Middle East and natural disasters in both South and North America had contributed to high oil prices.
"But we, I would like to stress again, we are targeting our work toward minimizing risks and that means stabilizing prices," Putin said.
