MOSCOW, May 8 (RIA Novosti) Russian ballistic missiles to receive MIRVed warheads/ Ukraine paid Russia $100 million for nuclear fuel in Jan.-Mar. 2007/ Russian Aluminum may lose leading positions on global market/ Royal Dutch Shell set to take over Yukos gas stations/ Government stake in Kamaz to be sold ahead of time
Vedomosti
Russian ballistic missiles to receive MIRVed warheads
In the next two to three years, Russia's Topol-M inter-continental ballistic missiles are to receive multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, General Nikolai Solovtsov, commander of the national Strategic Missile Force, said on Monday.
Experts said this is the cheapest way to counter the U.S. National Missile Defense (NMD) system and to maintain the required number of warheads in conditions of missile cuts.
The START-I Treaty, due to expire on January 1, 2009, bans the deployment of multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles on combat-ready missiles.
General Solovtsov said the new warheads would be installed on mobile ICBMs stationed in the Ivanovo Region, a major textile center in Central Russia.
Yury Solomonov, who designed the Topol-M ICBMs, said a year ago that the missiles could be equipped with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, but did not specify the exact dates. Rearmament terms have been mentioned for the first time, Ivan Safranchuk, director of the Moscow office of the Washington-based World Security Institute, said.
Although the Strategic Missile Force now has 489 ICBMs, most of the 442 missiles are obsolete, namely 76 R-36 Satan, 123 UR-100 NUTTKH and 243 Topol ICBMs, their service life will expire and they are due to be scrapped by 2015.
Dr. Pavel Podvig, Research Associate, Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, said based on technical characteristics, each Topol-M missile could have no more than three warheads.
Consequently, the Strategic Missile Force would have about 500 nuclear warheads by 2015, whereas strategic missile submarines and bombers would have another 1,000 warheads.
Dr. Podvig said there is no reason to talk about an arms race because the United States will most likely have 2200 strategic warheads by 2015.
General Solovtsov's statement could be interpreted as the recently mentioned "adequate measures" aimed at breaching U.S. missile defenses, Safranchuk said.
He said this decision was inevitable as Russia strives to maintain nuclear warhead parity with the United States.
Kommersant
Ukraine paid Russia $100 million for nuclear fuel in Jan.-Mar. 2007
Ukraine, which is currently negotiating 2008 fuel prices with TVEL, has announced how much it has paid for Russian nuclear fuel. It also said Moscow had raised fuel prices by at least 20% in 2007.
This disappointed the Kremlin, which believes that its partner has violated an unwritten law where contract prices for nuclear fuel are not disclosed.
According to the Ukrainian government and Ministry of Fuel and Energy, the National Nuclear Energy Generating Company Energoatom paid TVEL $365-$370 million in 2006, and made an advance payment of $100-$101 million in the first quarter of 2007.
TVEL is Russia's leading producer and supplier of nuclear fuel for power plants and supplies fuel to all Ukrainian nuclear power plants. TVEL's supplies Ukraine with an amount equivalent to at least one third of the Russian company's export portfolio. Its 2005 revenue exceeded $1 billion.
Experts said nuclear fuel prices, as well as uranium supplies and enrichment under long-term contracts, are considered secret. The Czech Republic and Finland, where TVEL won tenders for long-term fuel supplies in 2006, only said they would pay "hundreds of millions of euros."
When a gas war started brewing in Russian-Ukrainian relations, the Russian Nuclear Power Agency Rosatom proposed revising the 15-year contract on prices signed in 1996 between Energoatom and TVEL until 2010. At that time, uranium prices started to grow rapidly on the spot market, rising from $25 per 1 kilogram in 2003 to $88 in 2005. The current price is $293.
The publication of uranium prices in Ukraine could be part of preparations for talks with TVEL on supplies for 2008, because the second transition stage to buy fuel from an alternative supplier, U.S. Westinghouse, has been postponed until 2009. Westinghouse now accounts for less than 1% of fuel on the Ukrainian market.
Gazeta
Russian Aluminum may lose leading positions on global market
Russian Aluminum, Russia's major aluminum producer, which has recently become the world's leader in the sector, may soon lose its leader status. U.S. Alcoa intends to buy Canada's Alcan for $33 billion. If the transaction goes ahead, the united U.S.-Canadian company will become the global leader controlling 23% of the aluminum market.
The Americans have offered $58.6 for one Alcan share. The price offered by Alcoa exceeds by 32% the average price of Alcan shares for the last 30 sessions, and by 20% the cost of Alcan shares according to the May 4 bidding results. The planned transaction will amount to about $33 billion.
Alcoa is planning to make an official offer to Alcan on May 8.
The formation of the U.S.-Canadian aluminum alliance will push the Russian aluminum giant back to second place. Russian Aluminum, which was established just a month ago through the merger of RusAL, SUAL and Swiss Glencore's alumina producing assets, plans to annually produce 10.6 million metric tons of alumina and 3.9 million metric tons of aluminum. After the purchase of Alcan, Alcoa will be able to produce twice as much as the Russian company - 21.5 million metric tons of alumina and 7.8 million metric tons of aluminum.
According to data provided by Alexander Bulygin, RusAL's director general, the united Russian company's earnings will amount to about $10 billion. The U.S. company boasts a much higher figure - $54 billion.
"The new [U.S.-Canadian] company will account for about 23% of the global aluminum market," said Igor Nuzhdin from the Russian Zenit bank. "Russian Aluminum will thus be pushed back with a share of about 14%."
Nevertheless, experts say that even if the deal goes through, the Americans' leading position will be important mostly symbolically. The companies are not likely to really compete on the aluminum market since they are operating in different sectors.
"Alcoa and Alcan specialize in the production of a wide range of refined products, while Russian Aluminum manufactures primary aluminum and has a very strong position on this market," Nuzhdin explains. Whereas the Russian company has a very high profitability rate, Alcoa and Alcan have higher receipts per metric ton of aluminum they produce (Alcoa and Alcan receive about $7,000 per metric ton of aluminum, while RusAL's figure is about $2,500).
Vedomosti
Royal Dutch Shell set to take over Yukos gas stations
Shell Neft, a Russian subsidiary of international oil major Royal Dutch Shell, has signed a deposit agreement with Eduard Rebgun, the court-appointed receiver of embattled oil giant Yukos. It will compete with two other oil companies - state-owned Rosneft and British-Russian TNK-BP - in a tender for the sale of 537 Yukos gas stations.
In 2000, Yukos started buying gas stations in Moscow, taking over 50 stations in the Russian capital by 2003 and was second on the local market. The company also took over gas station chains in Samara, Novosibirsk and other regions.
Two sources close to Eduard Rebgun's staff said Shell Neft, which is owned by three London-based Royal Dutch Shell subsidiaries, has signed a deposit agreement prior to Thursday's tender. Royal Dutch Shell wants to buy lot No. 12 whose starting price is 7.7 billion rubles ($299.26 million).
"The company has always set its sights on the strategic Russian gas station market," Royal Dutch Shell spokesman Maxim Shub told the paper. Starting in 1997, the company bought 21 gas stations in St. Petersburg and seven in Moscow, a modest achievement.
Royal Dutch Shell would become a retail market leader together with LUKoil and Rosneft, if it won the tender. For comparison, LUKoil has over 1,600 gas stations over the Russian Federation, while Rosneft owns 650 gas stations, plus recently acquired 236 Yukos stations in Eastern Siberia.
Grigory Sergiyenko, executive director of the Russian Fuel Union, said the company would be ranked second after TNK-BP with its 600 gas stations and 50 BP Shell facilities.
Top Royal Dutch Shell managers should realize that minority Yukos shareholders could sue them, if the company bids in the tender, said Ost Legal director Vladimir Lipavsky. He said other major foreign companies, including Italy's ENI and BP, had tried to buy Yukos assets in the past.
Gazeta, Business & Financial Markets
Government stake in Kamaz to be sold ahead of time
The government has added its 34% stake in Russia's largest truck producer, Kamaz, to the 2007 privatization plan, although Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref had said the stake would not be privatized until the third quarter of 2008.
Gref's proposal to include Kamaz in the 2007 privatization plan provoked the fury of Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov. He said the economics minister was proposing selling enterprises that should be under state control, instead of preparing the privatization of non-liquid assets.
Fradkov had resisted the Economics Ministry's proposal to sell foreign trade association Machinoimport, arguing that it was needed by the state. The company was removed from the privatization list.
Now Kamaz has been added to it. The government said it would decide on the form and date for the Kamaz sale later.
The 34% stake will cost at least $2-$3 billion rubles ($116.55 million). But the Economics Ministry and the company's management expected to get more by floating the shares on the London Stock Exchange. However, "this would take too long, and the budget needs additional funds immediately," said a government source.
It was rumored that the state's shares in Kamaz would be taken over by state-controlled arms exporter Rosoboronexport, which is managing automobile producer AvtoVAZ.
In view of growing competition from foreign companies, Russian automobile producers can survive only if they unite in a major holding, according to a scenario of Boris Alyoshin, head of Russia's Federal Industry Agency.
However, Sergey Chemezov, head of Rosoboronexport, said last week that his company would not "take over" Kamaz, but would instead focus on the core business.
Sevastyan Kozitsyn, an analyst with Broker Credit Service, said Kamaz might become uncompetitive in a few years, when foreign companies increase truck assembly in Russia. He said Volvo Group had decided to build a plant in Russia to produce 15,000 trucks a year, and other global producers might soon follow suit.
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