Flights between Alaska and Kamchatka to be Restored

Apr. 9 – The air bridge between the U.S. state of Alaska and Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula will be resume this July five years after the collapse of direct flights between Anchorage (Alaska’s largest city) and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski (the urban and administrative center of the peninsula).

Yakutia Air, based in Russia’s northern Republic of Sakha, plans to offer direct flights over the Bering Straits starting in July, permitting direct travel to the isolated Russian peninsula for researchers, adventurers, businessmen and Russian expatriates living in Alaska.

Yakutia Air flies a fleet of 27 planes, including the Boeing 757, Boeing 737, and Russian planes like Tu-154, An-140-100 and An-24RV, according to the airline’s website. It flies to about 40 destinations in Russia and also flies to Asia and Europe. Read the rest of this entry »

Foreign Workers to be Sent Home from Russian Far East

Apr. 5 – Moscow has forced Vladistok’s regional authorities to kick out foreign workers from the Russian Far East as soon as they finish their work on construction sites for the upcoming APEC 2012 Summit, which will be held in the city this September.

The majority of the foreign workers, mostly citizens of China and North Korea, came to the Russian Far East to work on the APEC Summit and benefit from a simplified foreign labor entry regime to Vladivostok, which was set up by the country’s Ministry of Regional Development upon mass requests by APEC contractors. Read the rest of this entry »

McDonald’s to Expand into Siberia

Mar. 29 – U.S. fast food giant McDonald’s Corporation reportedly has begun to search for franchisees to expand into Siberia.

The fast-food giant intends to open new outlets using the franchise business model that is the basis for 80 percent of its restaurants worldwide, but has not been used in Russia yet, according to RBC Daily. All of the company’s 314 restaurants across 85 Russian cities are operated independently.

Last week, McDonald’s announced plans to open restaurants in the West Siberian cities of Novosibirsk, Tomsk, and Barnaul. According to a city official from Tomsk, the company intends to open on its own, and also by granting franchises. Read the rest of this entry »

Russia to Lease its Unused Farmland to Asian States

Mar. 20 – Russia may officially welcome Asian nations to lease its abandoned Far Eastern farmland at the APEC summit in Vladivostok this upcoming September.

“Since last year, we’ve been preparing a strategy to develop Russia’s Far East and east-west Siberia to announce at the APEC summit. We have 20 agricultural investment items to offer to Asia-Pacific countries,” Deputy Economic Development Minister Andrei Klepach told reporters. Some of these projects include up to 150,000–200,000 hectares.

For now, an area for lease includes the Primorsky Krai, Amur and Khabarovsk regions of the Russian Far East, where only half of the farmland is cultivated since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Read the rest of this entry »

The Republic of Tuva and the State of Russian Coal Exports

Mar. 14 – Russia’s US$8 billion investment into Siberia to develop the Tyva Ulug-Khem Coal Basin, estimated to have 2.5 times more reserves than the Mongolian Tavan Tolgoi field, could double the country’s metallurgical coal exports by 2020.

“Annual coal production in Tyva may reach 40 million metric tons in 2020 should all the companies implement the announced plans in full,” Dmitry Sakhno, project manager at OAO Severstal, Russia’s second- largest steel producer, said in an interview with Bloomberg.

At the same time, according to Sakhno, the delays by some of the mining companies as well as complexity’s of developing the region may curb production by 2020 to 15 million to 20 million tons. Read the rest of this entry »

French Vostok to Become Pioneer in Russian Electricity Market

Feb. 29 – French grid company Vostok has been contracted to run the Tomsk Distribution Company of Russia’s grid firm MRSK for an initial 18-month probationary period, the companies announced on Tuesday. It’s the first time a foreign entity has been permitted to manage an operating entity in Russia.

“This is the first instance of such cooperation with Western partners. The French party has made the right decision by choosing Siberia for its operations,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin noted.

Tomsk is a city in the southwest edge of the great Siberian Taiga, the administrative center of Tomsk Region, located about 3,500 kilometers from Moscow. Read the rest of this entry »

Russian Gold Production Increases, but Fails to Meet Expectations

Feb. 6 – Russian gold production rose 3.6 percent year-on-year in 2011 to 209 metric tons, but below an earlier forecast, data published on Wednesday by the Gold Industrialists’ Union industry lobby showed.

The union expected Russia to produce 211 tons of gold last year – up from 202 tons in 2010 – of which 185 tons was expected to be mined.

Despite missing expectations, Russia, whose reserves are second only to South Africa’s, managed to return to positive growth after annual output declined by 1.4 percent in 2010. Read the rest of this entry »

Sino-Russian ‘Bad Dates’ and Chinese Relations with ‘Abandonment Child’ of Moscow

By Marina Romanova

Sino-Russian series of bad dates
Chinese-American international energy consultant Edward Chow once said that the Russian-Chinese energy relationship isn’t a marriage, but rather “a series of bad dates.” As far as their energy relationship goes – also keeping in mind the two rather extreme types of relationship of ‘honeymoon’ (1950s) and ‘divorce’ (1960s and 1970s) between Beijing and Moscow – the whole Sino-Russian strategic partner can be described with this kind of metaphor.

Chinese businessmen and bureaucrats are playing a part in almost every Russian investment round-table and economic forum. And it wouldn’t be too much to say that almost every presentation by Chinese participants contains some words about Russia’s “investment unattractiveness” as one of the main reasons not to invest in the Russian economy. Read the rest of this entry »

Toyota Corp. to Open Dealerships in Far East Russia by Next Summer

Dec. 23 – Toyota Motor Corp. plans to open new authorized dealer’s centers in the Far East Russian cities of Khabarovsk, Vladivostok and Nakhodka by summer of 2012, President of Toyota Motors Russia Takeshi Isogaya said in a statement released to the press.

Dealer’s centers would be established in concentrated areas within the cities already receiving Japanese investment. 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 »

The Asia Briefing Bookstore