MOSCOW, June 20 (RIA Novosti) Gazprom pressures Sakhalin-I shareholders/ Rosoboronexport denies sale of air-defense fighters to Syria/ AvtoVAZ goes Fiat again/ Russia still hostage to Soviet Middle East policy - political expert/ Will Russia become the core of a super-state?
Kommersant
Gazprom pressures Sakhalin-I shareholders
Having done a deal on Sakhalin-II, Gazprom is now turning its attention to Sakhalin-I.
Alexander Ananenkov, deputy CEO of the energy concern, said gas from the Sakhalin-I project should be redirected from China to the domestic market. According to experts, Rosneft will get more profit if it exports it.
Ananenkov said yesterday that annual demand for gas in Russia's four Far Eastern regions is higher than 15 billion cubic meters. But production at the Sakhalin-III oil and gas offshore project is not due to begin before 2014, which means Sakhalin-I will be the only source of gas until then.
Andrei Dementyev, deputy minister of industry and energy, said: "Without that gas the region will not be able to develop."
Analysts are dubious that supplying gas to Russia's Far Eastern regions is the real reason behind Gazprom's reluctance to export gas. In their opinion, the Russian gas giant is unable to negotiate gas supplies with Beijing, because ExxonMobil has already signed a framework agreement to supply some 8 billion cubic meters of gas from Sakhalin-I to China annually.
Stanislav Tsygankov, head of Gazprom's Foreign Relations Department, said at the 11th International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg that China's CNPC planned to bring down the price of the gas in line with an agreement on Sakhalin-I.
Valery Nesterov, an analyst with the Troika Dialog brokerage, said: "Gas supplies to the region are not really relevant in this case. [Gazprom] is pressuring project shareholders. However, they include not only foreigners, as in the case with Sakhalin-II, but also Rosneft, which undoubtedly will prefer to export its gas output."
"The energy balance is not legally binding, no one is forced to honor it," Nesterov said, adding that production sharing agreements (PSA) are not covered by the law on single export channels.
Maxim Shein, an analyst with Broker Credit Service, said negotiations would be eventually limited to discussing terms for liquefying gas at Sakhalin-II plants.
The Sakhalin-I project, operated by Exxon Neftegas Limited, a subsidiary of U.S. oil major Exxon, is located on Sakhalin Island's northeastern shelf and is expected to bring in around $52.2 billion to the Russian budget by 2054, when it is scheduled to end.
Apart from the U.S. company, which has a 30% stake, the Sakhalin-I international consortium comprises Rosneft (20%), India's ONGC (20%), and Japan's SODECO (30%).
According to the Russian Industry and Energy Ministry, the project's C1 recoverable reserves amount to 329 billion cubic meters of gas, and plans stipulate an annual production capacity of 11.4 billion cubic meters.
Vedomosti
Rosoboronexport denies sale of air-defense fighters to Syria
On June 19, Sergei Chemezov, general director of Rosoboronexport, Russia's main state-owned arms exporter, said at the Le Bourget air show in France that Moscow and Damascus had not signed any contracts for the sale of MiG-31E Foxhound fighters to Syria.
Arms sales to Syria irritate Israel and could force Washington to declare sanctions against Moscow. However, limited air-defense fighter deliveries would have no effect on the regional balance of forces.
A source in the defense industry said Russia had agreed to sell four to eight MiG-31Es worth about $400 million to Syria, but that the contract had not yet come into force.
The Russian Air Force stopped buying these aircraft in 1993; consequently, several of them are standing idle at the Sokol aviation plant in Nizhny Novgorod, a city on the Volga River.
On February 2, Alexei Fydorov, president of the United Aircraft Corporation, which consolidates aviation production assets, and general director of the Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG, told an official function marking the plant's 75th anniversary that Sokol would soon export the first batch of MiG-31E fighters to an unspecified country and that the relevant contract had already been signed.
Alexander Shumilin, head of the Center for the Analysis of Middle East Conflicts, said the United States, which regarded the Syrian regime as hostile, could impose sanctions on Russian companies under the 2003 Syria Accountability Act if Damascus received the fighters.
Dmitry Vasilyev, an expert with the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, said Washington could declare sanctions against Rosoboronexport, MiG, or the Sokol plant if fighter deliveries were confirmed.
Zeev Elkin, member of the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) from the ruling Kadima party, said the sale of Russian fighters to Syria would seriously alter the Middle East balance of forces in favor of Damascus and Tehran.
Mikhail Barabanov, scientific editor of Arms Export magazine, said even the sale of several dozen warplanes would strengthen the security of Syria, whose armed forces had not received any new aircraft since the break-up of the Soviet Union, to some extent in conditions of Israel's overwhelming military superiority.
Kommersant
AvtoVAZ goes Fiat again
Fiat, the Italian car manufacturer, which was at the creation of AvtoVAZ in 1967, Russia's largest car maker, may again become its technological partner. The Russian company intends to buy from the Italian concern A and B car platforms and set up a joint venture to produce engines. The projects are estimated at $2 billion, and AvtoVAZ proposes they be financed by the government.
The Russian auto giant has announced perhaps the most crucial project since a Rosoboronexport team of managers took over in December 2005. Initially, AvtoVAZ approached Renault to buy a new platform for a budget car and to manufacture engines. But the talks fell through: Renault explained they "sold cars, not technology."
AvtoVAZ is not disclosing which Fiat A model it is interested in. Closer to the fall, Fiat plans to roll out a new A car in Italy: the Fiat-500. It is built around a modernized Fiat Panda with a 1.2- and 1.4-liter engine, and, as the company has declared, will become "an affordable alternative to the Mini for young people" (BMW Group brand). According to sources at AvtoVAZ, the new model could replace the "classics," which is scheduled to go off production by 2010.
The first foundation stone for AvtoVAZ's engine plant was laid in July 2006, but the project never got off the ground. AvtoVAZ has tried to negotiate a partnership with General Motors, but has so far achieved little.
According to Mikhail Blokhin, head of the National Association of Automotive Components Manufacturers, the partners will need no less than $1.5 billion to launch an engine production operation.
He says the plant will invest "not more than 500 million euros in the manufacture of the new A model. That sum is enough to buy presses, press-molds, and body spraying and welding equipment to assemble cars." The other components will be purchased abroad, including from Fiat, "and that is a good opportunity for the company to reduce production costs in manufacturing the new model."
Ivan Bonchev, head of automotive services at Ernst & Young, noted that by partnering up with Fiat, AvtoVAZ is looking at winding up its entire product line. AvtoVAZ has already contracted Canadian Magna to develop a C car for it, while Fiat could provide it with A and B vehicles, the expert said.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Russia still hostage to Soviet Middle East policy - political expert
An international financial and political swindle that ran for decades in the Middle East is coming to an end, writes Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the Middle East Institute. It has cost thousands of Palestinian lives and perhaps Palestine itself.
The unique UN status of Palestinian refugees has created an ever widening financial sinkhole drawing in more and more funds. It has provided the foundation with a multi-billion business with a huge staff of bureaucrats in the United Nations, World Bank, U.S. State Department and foreign ministries all over the world. These officials either received very high salaries or, generation after generation, have made careers on the Palestinian conflict. No great power was an exception.
Today's Russian Foreign Ministry is a hostage of Soviet policy. It was the U.S.S.R. that pushed to the world political stage Yasser Arafat, a terrorist and a terrorist leader, who with his own hands destroyed the future of this state in exchange for the possibility of controlling billions of dollars single-handedly.
The Russian Foreign Ministry is a hostage to the commitments once given to Palestinian leaders (first of all Fatah) and the personal ties binding the Palestinian establishment with our country. Moscow remains a devoted ally of the Palestinian people, continuing to advocate its interests in international organizations and in the quartet of Middle East negotiators (Russia, the United States, European Union, and the UN). At the same time it is aware of what is really taking place in the region, where Russia's interests lie and how senseless it is to pull another handful of chestnuts out of the fire for those patronized.
What could Russia do under the present circumstances? It could give asylum to specialists trained in the U.S.S.R. or Russia. It can also give political asylum to individual Fatah leaders and their families. If Russia had followed a more active foreign policy than in the past quarter century, it could speak of at least saving children in Gaza. Lastly, Russia could play a unique role in saving the 3,000 Christians remaining in the sector. And that would be much more useful for their future than paying lip service to the Russian-Palestinian brotherhood indulged in by the "patriotic-Orthodox" section of Russia's establishment.
Argumenty i Fakty
Will Russia become the core of a super-state?
Kyrgyz opposition groups are proposing holding a referendum on a union with Russia. Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transdnestr, and the Crimea also want Russian protection. Experts are discussing the possibility of Russia taking them in, although some say the dream of reviving the empire is just a utopia.
Alexander Dugin, head of the Center for Geopolitical Studies, said: "The idea is not to incorporate new territories into Russia, but to recruit a group of countries around it, rather like the European Union. The first-tier candidates are Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Armenia, which are members of the Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC) and Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), as well as Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
"The second-tier candidates are Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine, which have not stood the test of time. They will have to choose between joining the Eurasian union and falling apart. Anyway, Transdnestr [a self-proclaimed republic in Moldova], [the pro-Russian] Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea, [the breakaway Georgian republic of] Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, and some parts of Mingrelia [a historic province in the western part of Georgia] are more likely to opt for joining Russia.
"At the third stage, the new super-state could incorporate Mongolia, Serbia and possibly northern Afghanistan. The process may take 15 years, with the first stage taking 8-10 years, the second stage two or three years, and the third stage about the same again.
"It will be a highly complicated process, yet it will be simpler than creating the European Union, because these countries until relatively recently were already members of a common state, with a common economy, language, and culture. For them, integration is the only way to survive in the new world."
Dmitry Oreshkin, leading researcher at the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said: "A Eurasian union is an attractive utopia. We cannot properly develop Russia, where the Tver, Smolensk and Ivanov regions have been depressed zones for years. Serbia will never join such union; it wants to be part of Europe. Even so-called Russian patriots send their children to study in Europe, and keep their money and take their holidays there.
"The idea of a union proposed by Kyrgyzstan or South Ossetia is a cover because they know they are economically weak. Transdnestr wants to join Russia because its authorities have embezzled everything they could, and half of its population has moved to Russia and Moldova. That corrupt regime owes Russia $1.5 billion for gas supplies.
"There may be people in Ukraine who are nostalgic for the Soviet Union, but they are unlikely to vote for rejoining Russia. Even [Belarusian President Alexander] Lukashenko does not want to team up with us. He wanted to set up a union where he would be the boss, and he will not sacrifice his interests."
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