MOSCOW, March 30 (RIA Novosti) Russia invites China to join Sochi 2014 Olympic project / Chechen president's enemies are not safe anywhere / Gazprom to strip Europe of other gas sources / U.S. grain exporter comes to Russia
RBC Daily
Russia invites China to join Sochi 2014 Olympic project
The Russian business community is not prepared to invest in construction for the Winter Games in Sochi in 2014. This is probably why Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov said in Beijing last Friday that Russia was willing to expand investment cooperation with China.
He said preparations for the Sochi 2014 Games and the APEC 2012 summit were among its investment priorities.
Viktor Kolodyazhny, president of the Olympstroi state corporation in charge of the Sochi project, said $10 billion needs to be invested in the construction of Olympic facilities and infrastructure over the next four years.
Alexander Tkachev, governor of the Krasnodar Territory in southern Russia, where Sochi is located, put expenditures at $20 billion.
Either way, this is too much for the Russian budget, which is why the authorities have been trying to attract private investors.
Russian companies, which have borrowed too much abroad, are unlikely to be able to invest in Sochi to the extent that they promised. They are also reviewing their investment programs because of the government's decision to cut budget planning to one from three years and uncertainty over the recoupment of the Olympic facilities.
Market players say the Chinese would be more interested in construction for the APEC summit in Vladivostok in 2012.
"The reason is geographic proximity, which explains China's economic and political interests in the Far East," said Nikolai Krainov, president of the Pokrov investment group.
Russia plans to allocate 280 billion rubles ($8.4 billion) for preparations for the APEC summit.
Valery Mironov, a leading analyst at the Development Center, said: "There are growing problems with the budget. At a time when the government may need to consider taking out foreign loans or dipping into the National Welfare Fund, it would be wise to finance projects with a short recoupment period."
Maxim Perov, a partner at 2K Audit Business Consulting, said the APEC summit was above all a political image project, and therefore the government was unlikely to cut allocations for it.
Kommersant, Moskovsky Komsomolets
Chechen president's enemies are not safe anywhere
Sulim Yamadayev, age 36, a former commander of the Chechen Vostok battalion, has been taken to a hospital in a serious condition after surviving an assassination attempt in Dubai on Saturday, his relatives say.
Analysts say that people who could claim power in the Chechen Republic are being methodically removed from the scene.
Yamadayev's brother Ruslan, a former member of the Russian parliament's lower house, was gunned down near the Russian government building in central Moscow last September.
After recent fires in their homes in Gudermes, Chechnya, many of the Yamadayevs have left the republic. Sulim, his wife and their six children, who were living near Moscow at the time, went abroad in late December 2008.
The same month, three lawsuits were filed against him over an alleged organization of several assassination attempts and murders. Yamadayev says his problems are due to a conflict with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. They parted company last spring when the youngest Yamadayev brother, Batrutdin, and his bodyguards refused to give way to the Chechen president's motorcade.
According to the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily, the slogan of returning Chechnya to the sphere of Russian legislation, and assurances over the completion of the counterterrorist operation there, are only a cover for a fierce power struggle in the North Caucasus republic. The Kremlin has few allies left in this struggle, and the Yamadayev brothers were among the most influential. It is therefore not surprising that they are being killed off methodically, in and outside Russia.
Sergei Markedonov, a Caucasus expert and department chief at the Institute of Military and Political Analysis, said: "Apparently, those who can or may claim power in Chechnya are being removed from the scene."
However, the Kommersant business daily writes that the assassination attempt in Dubai could be traced to neighboring Saudi Arabia, the home country of Abu al-Walid, who fought as a mujaheddin volunteer in Central Asia, the Balkans and the North Caucasus. He was killed in April 2004 by the Vostok battalion.
Sulim Yamadayev was awarded Russia's highest military decoration, the gold star of a Hero of Russia, for that operation.
Vedomosti
Gazprom to strip Europe of other gas sources
Russian energy giant Gazprom has dealt Europe a new blow: starting in 2010, the monopoly is ready to buy all available gas in former Soviet republics.
On Friday, Gazprom and Azerbaijan's state oil company signed a memorandum on talks to sell Azeri gas. Deliveries to the Azerbaijan-Russia border are to begin in January 2010. Starting this year, Gazprom has adopted the European price formula for Central Asia ($340 per 1000 cu m in the first quarter, according to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin; Gazprom sold it to Europe for $400).
This will be a long-term contract, with European-formula prices pegged to an oil product basket, says a Ministry of Energy official. He is confident that Europe will not offer Azerbaijan a better price: the 200-km Baku - Novo-Filya pipeline is sitting idle. It needs an upgrade, but this is no problem, he believes; Russia has serious intentions, the talks have been going on since last summer, so this is not a demarche against the joint Ukraine-EU declaration to modernize the Ukrainian gas transportation system, which Russia was not invited to sign.
Azerbaijan is the last gas exporter among the former Soviet Union countries, with which Russia has no contract (all Ukraine's output, or 20 billion cu m, is consumed domestically). The offer to Azerbaijan was made in June 2008: Gazprom said that it wanted to purchase gas from the second stage of the Shah Deniz project (design capacity 16 billion cu m a year).
The European Union had looked to Azerbaijan as an alternative to Russia to fill the future Nabucco gas pipeline (the Iranian option looks so far doubtful for political reasons).
The most expensive gas from Gazprom's new projects (Shtokman and Yamal) will be cheaper than that from Central Asia and Azerbaijan, even if its production costs are three times as high as now, said Mikhail Korchemkin, director of East European Gas. Gazprom sells 550 billion cu m annually, and if it continues to purchase 10% to 20% of its gas at this price, it will lack money for new projects.
Kommersant
U.S. grain exporter comes to Russia
U.S. CHS Inc., one of the world's leading energy and grain-based food companies, is in talks to buy Agromarket-Trade from the Russian Agrico Group.
Last year CHS reported revenue of some $32 billion.
Russia plans to export around 20 million metric tons of grain in the 2008/2009 season, the third largest volume after the Untied States and the European Union. This is why nearly all of the world's grain giants have assets in Russia.
Top managers of the transnational grain company and a Russian grain trader said Cenex Harvest States (CHS, formed in 2003 through a merger between Cenex and Harvest States) had bought Agromarket-Trade. A source with close ties in Agromarket confirmed that talks were underway with CHS. The sources said the deal had been closed, or would be closed within days.
According to the sources, CHS is considering buying the whole of the Agrico Group.
Vladimir Bovin, director general of Agrico, said production would remain in the hands of former owners. He refused to give more information, saying that the media should wait for the official press release.
Annette Degnan, marketing communications director at CHS, said partnership with companies of the Black Sea had not been officially announced yet.
A source with close ties to Agromarket said CHS would take over Agromarket's main assets, notably its offices in Russia and Switzerland with the teams of traders, as well as a regional grain transportation and reloading network with assets in Krasnodar, Stavropol and Novorossiisk.
CHS may also gain access to the Russian company's grain storage infrastructure (the Grachevsky grain elevator) and over 100,000 hectares (247,100 acres) of farmland in the Krasnodar and Stavropol territories.
Agromarket-Trade, founded in 1998, is a part of the Agrico Group, one of Russia's biggest trading companies in the agricultural sector, and a member of the Russian Grain Association.
RIA Novosti is not responsible for the content of outside sources.
