YEREVAN (Reuters)–Russian gas supplies to Armenia were restored late on Monday after being severed for a day when bombs were found under a pipeline in the volatile southern region of Ingushetia.
Armenia gets around 2 billion cubic meters of gas annually from Russia, but customers were not affected, said Shushan Sardarian, a spokeswoman for ArmRosGazprom, a subsidiary of Russian gas monopoly Gazprom. “The supply of gas to Armenia has now restarted,” she said on Monday.
Russian police defused two bombs and searched the area for other explosive devices, after the Mozdok-Tbilisi pipeline was shut down on Sunday, a police official in Ingushetia told Reuters.
Officials then worked to restore the flow of gas in the pipeline which also serves customers in Russia’s North Ossetia and Ingushetia regions, an official for local gas firm Ingushneftegaz said.
Supplies of Russian gas to its ex-Soviet neighbors have been disrupted at various times in recent years by security scares and by political disputes. The mainly Muslim region of Ingushetia, which borders Chechnya, has seen a surge in attacks in recent months blamed on Islamist rebels who have promised to attack economic targets.
Georgia, which also receives gas from the pipeline, has not been affected by the cut, a spokeswoman for the Georgian Oil and Gas Corporation told Interfax news agency.
