MOSCOW, April 20 (RIA Novosti) Hungary suspects Surgutneftegaz of planning to block Nabucco project/ China beats Russia, West to Caspian energy resources/ Nigeria claims compensation from RusAl/ Russians get used to economic crisis
Kommersant
Hungary suspects Surgutneftegaz of planning to block Nabucco project
Hungarian politicians consider the acquisition of a 21.2% stake in oil and gas company MOL by Russia's Surgutneftegaz as an attempt to hinder the implementation of the Nabucco gas pipeline project, where Hungary is a partner.
The Russian company will be unable to influence decision-making at MOL, but will gain access to confidential information on the Nabucco project, planned to transport Central Asian gas to Europe bypassing Russia.
Surgutneftegaz closed the deal to buy the stake in MOL from Austria's OMV last week. MOL owns 16.6% in the Nabucco Pipeline Consortium, also comprising OMV, Germany's RWE, Turkish Botas, Bulgarian Bulgargaz and Romanian Transgas.
Zsolt Nemeth, head of the Hungarian parliament's foreign affairs committee, said Surgut bought a stake in MOL to get access to the Nabucco project. He said the Russian company's goal was to limit investment in the project and to give competitive advantage to Gazprom's South Stream.
A possible conflict of interest within the Nabucco project is increasing tensions created by the MOL deal. Surgut, which paid 1.4 billion euros for the stake, plans to process its crude at Hungarian refineries. However, MOL's managers said they consider Surgut only as an investor and are refusing to pay 2008 dividends.
An extraordinary meeting of the MOL shareholders scheduled for April 23 will consider changes in the company's charter that will oblige nominal shareholders to disclose their beneficiaries.
On April 9, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the Hungarian authorities' statements were aimed at "adding a non-existent political element to the actions of economic operators."
However, Valery Nesterov of Troika Dialog said that Surgut could not have made the decision to buy into MOL without the Russian authorities' approval "in the light of their traditionally conservative policy regarding acquisitions in Europe."
Lev Snykov of VTB Capital said Russia could not use MOL to block the construction of the Nabucco pipeline. The only thing Surgut can do is nominate a candidate for MOL's board of directors and thereby gain access to insider information regarding Nabucco.
Vedomosti, Kommersant
China beats Russia, West to Caspian energy resources
China has issued a $10 billion loan to Kazakhstan. Half of that amount was provided by China's top oil firm CNPC to Kazakhstan's KazMunaiGaz, to enable the two companies to buy a third holding, MangistauMunaiGaz (MMG), on a parity basis from Indonesian Central Asia Petroleum.
The new agreements between the two Asian countries, which effectively promoted China to the status of one of the largest foreign players in Kazakhstan's energy, demonstrate China's determination to put more effort in racing Russia and the West to the Caspian's energy resources.
MMG is Kazakhstan's fourth largest privately owned oil company, which controls one third of the retail market for petroleum products. It owns 36 oil and gas fields with resources estimated at 812 million metric tons of oil equivalent and recoverable reserves at 194 million tons). Until January 2009, the company was officially owned by Central Asia Petroleum, and de facto by Rakhat Aliyev, former son-in-law of President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
The other half of the loan, $5 billion, is being provided by China Eximbank (the Export-Import Bank of China) to Kazakhstan's Bank for Development for telecoms, transport, agriculture, and education projects.
China will participate in the construction of the Balkhash thermal power plant and in the Western Europe-Western China highway project.
In 1997, China and Kazakhstan signed an oil and gas cooperation agreement, which made China a major player in Kazakhstan's energy sector. China financed the construction of an oil pipeline linking central Kazakhstan with China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. In 2006, CNPC acquired for $4.18 billion PetroKazakhstan, a Canadian company developing oil and gas in Kazakhstan.
China is pursuing a string policy of buying energy assets around the globe including Brazil, Venezuela, and Angola, said Leonid Vardomsky, head of the Center for CIS and Baltic Studies at the Institute of Economics.
In February, China's Development Bank issued Russia's Rosneft and Transneft a $25 billion loan. Beijing is supporting the Kazakh government in exchange for "its go-ahead to further expand Chinese business in the country," said Valery Nesterov from Troika Dialog.
Other foreign companies were also eyeing stakes in MMG, including Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of Russia's gas export monopoly. However, unlike Moscow or the West, China has international reserves worth $1.9 trillion, which enables it to make irresistible offers to Central Asian countries, despite the general economic downturn.
Gazeta
Nigeria claims compensation from RusAl
A week ago, the military junta in Guinea announced plans to review a deal with Russian aluminum giant RusAl concerning the Friguia bauxite and alumina complex. The Russian company is now having similar problems with Nigeria, whose government has accused it of violating the terms of the Alscon deal.
The loss of its Nigerian and Guinean assets could severely damage RusAl, as Friguia and Alscon are parts of a production chain that the Russian company has spent ten years developing.
Its African assets ensure some 4% of RusAl's aluminum and over 5% of alumina production.
RusAl became a majority shareholder of the Aluminum Smelter Company of Nigeria (Alscon) in February 2007, when it paid $250 million for a 77.5% stake in the company and pledged to invest another $150 million in its modernization within three years. The deal also stipulates creating 1,900 jobs, involving local small and medium-sized businesses, and dredging the Imo River to create transport infrastructure.
Alscon's other shareholders are the Nigerian government (15%) and Germany's Ferrostaal AG (7.5%).
However, the Nigerian government now claims that RusAl has not fulfilled its obligations. Nigeria's Bureau of Public Enterprises has set up a committee made up of five members of the National Council on Privatization to investigate and make recommendations to the Council on ways to address all issues associated with the delays in the dredging of the Imo River channel by RusAl by late April.
According to the foreign media, Alscon cost $3.6 billion at the time of the deal, while the Russian company paid just $250 million.
The Guinean authorities claim that RusAl paid $19 million for a $280-million facility.
Both the African officials and the U.S. Bancorp Financial Investment Group (BFI Group) have called for the deals to be invalidated. BFI Group said RusAl bought the asset after its consortium with South Korea's Daewoo was denied the right to buy.
BFI Group is demanding $2.8 billion in compensation from RusAl, but its complaints have not been supported by the courts, which ruled that the corruption complaints were not proven.
Kommersant
Russians get used to economic crisis
Russians have got used to the tight economic situation, although they are unlikely to be able to survive it for more than a year, according to a forecast by the national sociological services following a public opinion survey carried out in the first quarter of this year.
Even in March, 51% of Russia's assessed the general situation in the country as "extremely bad." However, in mid-April, the VTsIOM pollster said only 41% of respondents were so pessimistic. The number of respondents who said the situation was "normal" grew to 39% from 29%.
VTsIOM Director Valery Fedorov attributed the change in trend to people "getting used to the crisis." It happened because Russia so far has seen "no surge in crime, or a significant drop in living standards below the poverty line, or other horrors predicated earlier this year." The other reason, according to Fedorov, is the government making its stimulus and bailout policies public rather than adopting them in secret. "People like to hear that someone is taking care of the crisis," he added.
On the other hand, practically all groups in the population regardless of their income said they would not be able to stick to their current lifestyles for more than a year. The unemployed see themselves as the most vulnerable group, because if they don't find jobs now, they will not survive for more than five months.
Students seem the most confident, expecting to stick it for 15 months with their parents' support. Private company employees do not know what might happen nine months from now. Those working in the public sector do not expect a fall in living standards for another 11 months.
Society is signaling to the government that its confidence is fading, said Boris Makarenko, head of the Center for Political Technologies think tank.
However, people "will take anything, even economic experiments," as long as the government sticks to its social commitments. However, the government will be given limited time for experimenting.
But this limited time should be enough to bail the country out, said Iosif Diskin, a Public Chamber member. He said the government had overestimated potential social tensions in the first place, but the crisis has proved far less devastating, apparently following the best-case scenario.
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