Below is a summary of the main energy-related events in Russia, the CIS and neighboring countries on December 16, 2005
* Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Andrei Sharonov said the subsidiaries of state-owned oil major Rosneft could be transformed from public entities into limited liability companies to consolidate the company's assets into a single share
* Russian electricity monopoly Unified Energy System said it would select a group of power stations in March 2006 from among several territorial generating companies for possible IPOs
* The president of Russian state-owned diamond giant Alrosa said that as part of its diversification plan, the company was interested in buying Yakut non-core businesses, specifically the coal mining company Yakutugol and Yakutgazprom, a subsidiary of Russian energy giant Gazprom
* Gazprom said it had developed a program for providing natural gas to Russia's regions, which was a major social project
* The Russian government has given Gazprom the right to use a sector of the country's continental shelf located in the southeast of the Barents Sea for exploration and production on the Dolginsky oil field
* The Federal Tariff Service said the average tariffs for electrical power in Russia's regions were expected to increase by 6.3%-6.5% in 2006
* Kuzbass, one of the world's largest coal basins located in western Siberia, hit a record high, producing 160 million metric tons of coal in 2005, the administration of the Kemerovo Region said
* The Russian Audit Chamber said the country's budget lost more than $275 million in unpaid taxes on energy exports in 2004
* Investment in developing the Vankor oil-and-gas deposit in the Krasnoyarsk Territory in central Siberia will total $2.72 billion, the territory's governor said
* The Federal Service for State Statistics said Russia's oil output stood at 390 million metric tons in January-October 2005, a 2.2% year-on-year increase
* A Moscow district federal arbitration court rejected an appeal filed by embattled oil major Yukos against a back-tax bill of about $3 billion for the year 2000
* Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said the first stage of the $4- billion-plus Boguchansk hydroelectric plant, being built as part of a partnership agreement between electricity giant Unified Energy System and aluminum company RusAl in Siberia, was expected to be commissioned in 2010
