MOSCOW, February 7 (RIA Novosti) Russia viewed as a top U.S. security threat / Regional election commissions receive financial motivation for their work / Nabucco losing battle against trans-Caspian pipeline / Medvedev's parting gift to Gazprom / Sakhalin I to drastically cut output in 2008 /$13 billion not enough to prepare for Sochi Olympics
Kommersant
Russia viewed as a top U.S. security threat
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told Congress on Tuesday that U.S. intelligence agencies had "concerns about the financial capabilities of Russia, China and OPEC countries and the potential use of their market access to exert financial leverage to political ends."
His annual report on threats to the United States in fact marked Russia and China as security threats on a par with al Qaeda, Iraq and Iran.
Russia and China have long been able to target U.S. computer systems to collect intelligence, he said. "The worrisome part is, today, they also could target information infrastructure systems for degradation or destruction," McConnell told the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"Aggressive Russian efforts to control, restrict or block the transit of hydrocarbons from the Caspian to the West-and to ensure that East-West energy corridors remain subject to Russian control-underscore the potential power and influence of Russia's energy policy."
Christopher Bond, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, evaded the question of whether the U.S. also regards Moscow's military exports to Iran and Syria as a threat to its national security.
"There is a whole range of threats," said Bond evasively. "Each of them is quite serious, and I wouldn't select any of them as the top one," he said.
A source close to U.S. intelligence bodies said the list of threats includes a suspicion that Moscow-Tehran nuclear cooperation has exceeded the limits of international agreements.
Russian experts have been asked to say whether the United States is a threat to Russia.
Vladimir Vasilyev, chairman of Russia's parliamentary committee on security, said: "Strategically, the aggressive U.S. stance is creating precedents, which can be aimed against Russia, like Kosovo, for instance. The U.S. is afraid of Russia due to its growing strength."
Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, deputy president of the Academy for Geopolitical Studies, said: "Russia's economic security is being undermined by the U.S. economic crisis. We are being pushed out of customary geopolitical theaters; our domestic affairs are being overtly interfered in. We are too weak to threaten the U.S. in any way."
Nikolai Petrov, scholar-in-residence, program chair for Russian domestic politics and political institutions, society and regions at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said: "There are no new threats from anyone. Simply, presidential campaigns are aggravating discussions on foreign policy issues. They are aimed at a domestic audience, but they produce an impact on foreign audiences as well."
Nikolai Zlobin, director of Russian and Asian programs of the U.S. Information Defense Center, said: "We can also add environmental and technologic threats to the list. But trouble comes from misunderstanding between Russia and the U.S. Nobody knows for sure what is going on in Russia, which is provoking aggression."
Vedomosti
Regional election commissions receive financial motivation for their work
Russia will elect its next president on March 2. If the winner is determined in the first round, then the money saved will be spent on bonuses for election commission officials.
Analysts said they were surprised by such financial incentives.
Stanislav Bisin, chairman of the Nizhny Novgorod Region's election commission, said second round election allocations would be distributed as bonuses to the staff of regional election commissions if the president is elected in a first round.
He said this would be done under a federal law passed in late 2007.
Yevgeny Kolyushin, a member of the Central Election Commission, said this had never been done before, and that all surplus funds were usually simply returned to the federal budget.
In all, 20% of 5.125 billion rubles ($207.49 billion) presidential election allocations have been set aside for the second election round. However, only part-time workers at regional election commissions receiving between 15 rubles ($0.6072) and 52.3 rubles ($2.12) per hour will be entitled to bonuses.
Nikolai Konkin, head of the Central Election Commission, said the nationwide election system employed about a million people, and that large bonuses were out of the question.
Political analyst Alexander Kynev said regional election commissions had been frequently found guilty of election rigging in the past, and that although staff should receive bonuses, giving incentives to produce a specific result is a strange idea.
According to Lilia Shibanova, executive director of the Golos (Voice) association in Karelia, who monitored the December 2, 2007 elections to the State Duma, regional commissions rewrote one out of every six election protocols.
Bisin said the Central Election Commission did not stipulate single round presidential elections, and that voters had the final say.
Gazeta
Nabucco losing battle against trans-Caspian pipeline
The commissioning of the Nabucco pipeline will be delayed again, leaving it with no chance in its competition against the Russian trans-Caspian project.
Iran's participation could save Nabucco, but the European Union would not welcome it because of its negative attitude to the country's president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad.
The Nabucco Gas Pipeline International consortium reported that the project would not be commissioned until 2013. It was initially expected to be commissioned in 2011, and then in 2012.
Yet another delay in commissioning this "stillborn project" (as Europeans have dubbed it) can be regarded as Russia's certain victory. "A series of successful Russian talks on the Caspian pipeline with foreign partners in late 2007 and early 2008 has seriously undermined Nabucco's positions," says Konstantin Gulyayev, an expert for the Region investment company. "There are more and more doubts over the expediency of the project," he says.
According to him, Nabucco is largely a political project, but if they lose time and the Russian pipeline (along the eastern Caspian coast from Turkmenistan via Kazakhstan and Russia) is put into operation earlier, the alternative gas pipeline project will not be completed.
Konstantin Reily of the Finam investment company is of the same opinion: "The operating gas fields do not produce enough gas for both projects," he says. "It is rather costly to implement such projects, and investors will not put their money into someone's political interests."
Europe is still trying to save its project but, according to political analysts, it has not chosen the right way to do this. "The consortium implementing the Nabucco project has re-orientated the pipeline from Central Asian gas to Iranian energy resources, as Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have clearly displayed their pro-Russian orientation," says Dmitry Abzalov, an analyst at the Center for Political Studies. "However, the European countries, the main customers of Nabucco, take a very tough attitude towards Iran and, especially, towards the Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."
Abzalov warns that the choice of Iran as a major gas supplier will tangibly strengthen Ahmadinejad's position on the world political scene. "The West will try to prevent this," the analyst says.
It is not yet clear whether Nabucco will get Iranian gas, but if does not, the project will not worth implementing. Russia could not but take part in this. "Our country is lobbying the construction of a pipeline from Iran to India," Abzalov explains. "This project may redirect the main flow of energy resources and leave the Nabucco pipeline empty."
Kommersant
Medvedev's parting gift to Gazprom
First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the frontrunner for the presidency at the March 2 elections, has made a parting gift to Gazprom, where he chairs the board of directors.
He has instructed the Mineral Resources Ministry and the Ministry of Industry and Energy to draft a government resolution to hand over development rights for the Chayandinskoye gas condensate deposit, located in Yakutia, a republic in Russia's Far East, to the energy giant. However, analysts say Gazprom would not start developing the deposit this year.
Medvedev issued the instructions after Alexander Ananenkov, deputy CEO of Gazprom, said the proven reserves accounted for only 380 billion cubic meters of the deposit's total of 1.26 trillion cubic meters, which implied the need for additional exploration.
Ananenkov also said that given the shortage of Sakhalin reserves, the gas pipeline from Chayanda via Skovorodino, Blagoveshchensk and Khabarovsk would become the core of East Siberia's energy system.
Sources in the two ministries said the document would be drafted and approved very quickly, so that Gazprom can start working at the Chayandinskoye deposit in April.
In late November 2007, the government added the deposit to the 31-item list of federal gas fields.
Gazprom has long been asking that the government give it the deposit, which also has 50 million metric tons (367.5 million bbl) of oil, without a tender, planning to supply its output to China through the Altai gas pipeline, which is to be built. However, Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) have not yet agreed on a gas price.
According to Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of the energy giant, it will develop the oil resources of Chayandinskoye alongside its other East Siberian assets, including the Vakunaisky and Ignalinsky blocks it bought last autumn. But it will not start commercial oil production there until 2013 even if Gazprom receives the license this year.
Valery Nesterov, an oil analyst at the Troika Dialog investment company, said commercial development of the deposit would start only in 2015-2020. "Some might set the deadline sooner, but experience shows that timeframes always change in projects involving such large deposits," he said.
The analyst said total investment in the comparable Kovykta deposit, located in East Siberia's Irkutsk Region, had been assessed at $30 billion.
Nesterov said China might buy gas from Chayandinskoye, but the construction of "a gas pipeline running parallel to the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline, for delivering natural gas to LNG plants on the Pacific coast, has not yet been ruled out."
Vedomosti
Sakhalin I to drastically cut output in 2008
Sakhalin I's owners have announced they will cut oil production by one quarter this year. The cut, they said, is a scheduled one and has been agreed with the government.
But experts said the reduction was too drastic, and speculated that it might be a diversion tactic in talks on the project's gas component sought by Gazprom.
Last year Sakhalin I's output peaked at 11.2 million metric tons for the first time. In 2008, the operator will cut production by 27.6%, down to 7.9-8.2 million metric tons, Lev Brodsky, general director of Sakhalin projects, said on Wednesday.
Dilyara Sydykova, a spokeswoman for the ExxonMobil project operator, declined to comment, but said the reduction had been agreed with government officials. The reasons for bringing output down were technical, she said.
Rosneft also declined to comment. As early as 2006, it warned in an IPO memorandum that production on Sakhalin I would start falling in 2008.
Experts said a 28% drop in the wake of a peak was too much. Usually, the growth period is followed by a stabilization phase and it was not until then that output goes down, said Denis Borisov from Solid brokerage.
The reason might be that the consortium, pushing for a leap in production, put several wells into operation at the same time and now there are no untapped holes left to keep up the drive, the expert said.
An official from the Ministry of Industry and Energy said project participants expected to maintain output by drilling wells on the Chaivo oil leg. Last year, ExxonMobil asked the Ministry of Natural Resources to enlarge the licensed area, but the ministry decided to hold an auction.
The inclusion of Chaivo into Sakhalin I has been under consideration since 2003 and the consortium could not have taken Chaivo into account when planning production, said a former official of the Economic Development and Trade Ministry.
The decision to cut output is more political than economic, he said, and may provide leverage in talks on the project's gas component sought by Gazprom.
The Sakhalin I oil and gas project includes the deposits Chaivo, Odoptu and Arkutun-Dagi. The potential recoverable reserves are 307 million tons of oil and 485 billion cubic meters of gas.
ExxonMobil and Japan's Sodeco each own 30%, Rosneft and India's ONGC 20% each.
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
$13 billion not enough to prepare for Sochi Olympics
Russia's victory in a tender for the right to host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, a mountain resort city on the Black Sea, may be its undoing. So far, Russian authorities and developers have not done enough to meet the challenging task.
It is not yet clear how much the project will cost. The decision to buy out nearly 700 hectares (1,730 acres) of land from local residents at market prices, announced on Tuesday, will greatly increase the approved cost of the project ($13 billion).
The government will need between $3.5 billion and $10.5 billion to buy out land, or even more because prices are rising fast. The first deal to buy out 0.1 hectare at $1 million was announced last January, and many landowners in Sochi claim 0.1 hectare must cost at least $200,000.
The government planned to spend only 81 billion rubles ($3.28 billion) on Olympic construction in Sochi in the next three years.
The Russian Audit Chamber announced Tuesday that the targets are unlikely to be achieved. It analyzed the implementation of the federal program for developing Sochi as a mountain and spa resort in 2006-2014, and established that only 2.7 billion rubles ($109.44 million) out of the approved 20.2 billion rubles were allocated in 2007 (less than 14% of the plan) and only 80 million rubles ($3.24 million) have been spent under state contracts.
Developers may still catch up with the program's schedule, but the 20 billion rubles not invested in 2007 have greatly depreciated.
The development costs of all major projects in Russia were increased several-fold. A relevant example is the construction of the first leg of the Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline, whose cost has grown from $6.7 billion to $12.5 billion, and may grow still more.
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