Russian Companies to Break into Brazilian Market

Nov. 8 – The Russian gas giant Gazprom opened an office in Rio de Janeiro last week, while another Russian oil producer TNK-BP announced an agreement to buy 45 percent of the Solimoes Basin project for US$1 billion from the Brazilian HRT Participacoes em Petroleo.

TNK-BP and HRT Participacoes em Petroleo will jointly produce oil and gas from fields near the Amazon, with first output expected next year.

“The discovery of major hydrocarbon deposits in Latin America and the high growth rates of natural gas consumption there provide for an effective development of partnership relations,” The Moscow Times reported a Gazprom official as saying. Read the rest of this entry »

Russia to Review its Gas Contract with Ukraine

Sept. 28 – Russia has agreed to review its gas contract with Ukraine, Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said Monday.

“We have finally managed to reach an agreement with Russia on reviewing the contract,” Azarov said at a meeting with a delegation of the Council of Europe’s parliamentary assembly.

Ukraine has been pressing Russia for months to revise a 2009 gas deal, agreed under the previous Ukrainian leadership, which current President Viktor Yanukovych’s government says saddled the country with an exorbitant price for supplies of Russian gas. Read the rest of this entry »

IMF Recommends Russia Undertake Economic Reforms

Sept. 22 – Russia must make fundamental changes to its fiscal and monetary policy in the next few years to reach stable economic growth and reduce the country’s vulnerability to external shocks, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday.

Under the current economic scenario, Russia will remain vulnerable to shocks, with GDP showing modest growth of 3.8 percent annually through 2016 and remaining below 4 percent in the long term, said Odd Per Brekk, the IMF’s senior resident representative in Russia. Read the rest of this entry »

Russia to Attract More Foreign Investment

Sept. 20 – Foreign investors are optimistic about Russia’s future attractiveness, according to Ernst & Young’s first Russia Attractiveness Survey published on the company’s web site.

A total of 75 percent of international business leaders interviewed by Ernst & Young said Russia had an attractive domestic market, with about one-third of them calling it “very attractive,” the consulting company said in the survey. Read the rest of this entry »

Oil Tax Reforms to Be Set in Weeks

Sept. 19 – Oil tax reforms should be set shortly, a senior Exxon executive told reporters last Friday.

Russia’s top oil producer Rosneft signed a major deal with ExxonMobil last month to drill for oil and gas in the Russian Arctic without a clear tax regime for the potentially capital-intensive project.

The initial commitment was US$3.2 billion, but the costs could run into double digit billions. Russian oil companies pay some of the world’s highest taxes on their mature onshore production, but breaks are granted for new fields or difficult conditions. Read the rest of this entry »

Russia Wants to Boost Trade with Korean Peninsula

Aug. 16 – In a message to North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-il, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said his country is willing to step up cooperation with both Koreas including a trilateral project in gas, energy and railway construction, North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency reported Monday.

“[The project] will contribute to stabilizing the situation in Northeast Asia and denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula,” KCNA quoted him as saying. Read the rest of this entry »

Lithuania to Break Gazprom Control Over its Energy Market

Jul. 15 – Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite has signed a new law that will break the Gazprom gas monopoly’s control over supplies and distribution in the Baltic state.

In doing so, Lithuania has become the first European Union country to begin implementing new regulations seen as a major test of the EU’s determination to slow the Russian company’s advance into Europe.

According to the law, Russian energy group Gazprom, which bought a 37.1 percent stake in Lithuania’s gas utility Lietuvos Dujos in 2004, will have to give up its ownership of the country’s pipelines within the next two coming years. Read the rest of this entry »

Russia and China to Create Green Energy Joint Venture

Jun. 23 – Inter RAO Unified Energy Systems and China’s National Bio Energy Co. agreed to create the Green Energy Corporation joint venture by the end of 2011 to overhaul inefficient power plants that run on coal and fuel oil to include the use of biomass, according to the Russian state-run corporation’s web site.

Green Energy’s activities will include building power plants that run on various types of biomass to generate thermal and electric energy, as well as biogas, reconstructing coal and oil-burning power plants with low indicators of energy and resource efficiency to integrate energy saving technologies and technologies of biomass-based fuel blends, creating plants to make briquette fuel pellets of peat, waste wood and other types of biomass. Read the rest of this entry »

Russia’s Economy Ministry Forecasts Economic Growth to Slow Down

Jun. 3 – Russian economic growth may slow more than previously forecast next year as oil prices stagnate and the government uses its energy revenue this year to rebuild the nation’s sovereign wealth funds, the Economy Ministry said.

The ministry revised down its growth forecast to 3.5 percent in 2012 from the previous estimate for a 3.9 percent increase, Deputy Economy Minister Andrei Klepach told reporters in Moscow.

“Practically all of the increased revenue from higher oil prices is going to the Reserve Fund and the National Wellbeing Fund instead of toward boosting expenditures,” Klepach said. Read the rest of this entry »

Indian Businesses to Enter Russia’s Oil Market

Jun. 1 – Indian ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas arm of state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd, is in talks with four other state-run oil firms to acquire 25 percent equity in an entity that is proposed to be formed with Russian oil-to-telecom conglomerate AFK Sistema, The Times of India reports.

Sistema owns a large stake in Russian production and refining group Bashneft, which has a market value of US$10.5 billion that the Indian company wants to buy.

Pooling of assets will allow ONGC to spread exploration risks in its 100 percent subsidiary Imperial Energy, which has assets in Russian Siberia’s Tomsk Region. Read the rest of this entry »

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