MOSCOW, November 9 (RIA Novosti) The country will ask Putin to stay at the helm / Moscow benefits from EU decision to cancel aviation summit / Timan Oil & Gas signs agreement with Gazprom's subsidiary / Lafarge pays exorbitant price for Russian cement deposit / Low-cost laptops are not advantageous for Russia
Kommersant
The country will ask Putin to stay at the helm
The campaign in support of Vladimir Putin is developing even more energetically than the parliamentary campaign. Representatives of Moscow's civic groups have publicly asked the president to continue to run the country even after his term ends.
Kommersant has information that Moscow will soon host a constituent assembly of a public movement "For Putin," which will draft proposals on behalf of the nation for the future configuration of governance, centered around the national leader, Vladimir Putin.
Groups of activists have been holding meetings to support Putin since late October. Some voice "third-term" proposals again, others simply express their support and love for their president.
On November 15, the Tver Region to the northwest of Moscow will host a meeting of activists from all regions where Putin support meetings have been held, to combine their efforts in a national movement "For Putin." That gathering will be followed by a forum of Putin's supporters in Moscow on November 21-22. Some sources suggest that the pro-Kremlin United Russia party will be organizing the event and paying for the participants' travel and accommodation.
A United Russia source said the movement's activists would be recruiting high and low and uniting even those Putin supporters who do not like United Russia.
The new movement will do more than just support the pro-Kremlin party's parliamentary campaign. It has collected enough signatures to become a new non-party network, which could present to the nation a draft of the new configuration of power with Putin as its central figure, to be applied after the parliamentary and presidential elections.
Curiously enough, the majority of Putin's supporters do not want to know about legal subtleties, they just want Putin to keep running the country for them. Famous Russian actor Sergei Prokhanov, for example, said the constitution should be amended. "If the nation supports its leader, his powers should not be restricted," he said.
Well-known lawyer Pavel Astakhov echoed his comments, saying it was not impossible. "Any law is a live organism and is subject to change if the people want it. The lawmakers' job is to develop the necessary mechanisms."
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Moscow benefits from EU decision to cancel aviation summit
The Russia-EU aviation summit, slated for November 16-17, was canceled because of Moscow's reluctance to sign an agreement on trans-Siberian overflights late next week.
Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of research at the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, said the EU wants Russia to scrap trans-Siberian overflight fees for foreign carriers.
EU air carriers currently lease overflight frequencies and additional services from Aeroflot Russian Airlines, Transaero and other national flagship carriers.
If Moscow agrees to reduce overflight fees stage by stage, then the EU will receive unlimited access to the extremely promising Europe-Asia commercial route, Suslov told the paper.
In November 2006, the European Union and Russia agreed on a system for overflight charges for Asia-bound European airliners using Russian airspace. Under the agreement, Moscow will allow European airlines to use current and future overflight frequencies free of charge, Suslov said.
The flight parity principle facilitating the competitiveness of Russian air carriers would be abolished, thereby enabling the EU to effectively compete with U.S. and East Asian airlines.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso regularly says that Brussels does not plan to revoke the 2004 protocol on completing bilateral talks as regards Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization.
But Suslov said nothing could prevent Brussels from resuming such talks if Moscow backs down on trans-Siberian overflight fees, linked by the EU with Russia's WTO accession, and that new demands could be expected in the near future.
He said the decision to cancel the summit matched Russian interests because Moscow was facing exorbitant EU demands. The EU could have tried to promote its own strategy of bilateral aviation relations, to impose its own environmental-protection and safety standards and regulations and to persuade Moscow to establish a unilateral open-skies regime at the summit.
Gazeta
Timan Oil & Gas signs agreement with Gazprom's subsidiary
Britain's Timan Oil & Gas (TOG), which holds development licenses for fields in the Komi Republic, has opted for cooperation with Russian natural gas monopoly Gazprom rather than with the Ukrainian state-run energy concern Naftogaz. Experts think the British company was attracted by the Russian partner's "administrative resource."
TOG and Zapsibgazprom, a Gazprom subsidiary operating in West Siberia, signed a strategic memorandum on October 22, but it was made public only on November 8. The companies are planning to jointly develop oil and gas fields in the Komi Republic and on the Caspian shelf. Zapsibgazprom's investments in the project may reach $500 million.
Until recently, Ukraine's Naftogaz negotiated possible cooperation with TOG. The Ukrainian company showed an interest in TOG's projects Izberbash and Sulak in the Russian zone of the Caspian shelf. However, the negotiations did not succeed. Experts claim the British company's planned rapprochement with Gazprom was one of the reasons.
Alexander Kapalin, TOG's managing director, spoke earlier of a possible technological alliance with a Gazprom subsidiary. He did not conceal that within this alliance the British company could rely on Gazprom's support along certain lines. He could have meant Gazprom's administrative support in settling TOG's conflict with Rosprirodnadzor, Russia's environmental protection agency. In August 2007 the agency declared its intention to inspect the activities of several foreign companies operating in the Komi Republic, including Neftegazpromtech owned by TOG. In addition to this, the Federal Mineral Resource Agency (Rosnedra) sent an order to the Mineral Resource Agency of the Komi Republic to cancel the permit issued to the company in November 2006 to increase the area of the Nizhnechutinskoye field (from 131 sq km to 215 sq km).
Judging by all signs, the British company's hopes were justified. Recently, TOG won a double victory over Rosnedra in the Moscow Arbitration Court. The court obligated the agency to issue a license for the West-Vodnensky area (459 sq km) to the company. This license area is adjacent to TOG's operating field in the Komi Republic. The court also invalidated the agency's order prohibiting the company to expand the borders of the Nizhnechutinskoye field.
Vedomosti
Lafarge pays exorbitant price for Russian cement deposit
France's Lafarge Group, the largest cement producer in the world, paid 702 million rubles ($28.68 million) for the cement rock deposit in the Rostov Region, southern Russia. The initial bidding price was just 8 million rubles ($326,797).
A nearby plant, due to be built by the company, will produce 1.2-1.8 million metric tons of cement per year. The Lafarge Group, which owns Russia's Voskresensk Cement and Ural Cement companies, which turn out 4.8 million tons of cement per year, plans to invest 150 million euros in the venture.
Antanta Capital analyst Georgy Ivanin said cement rock deposits were usually underpriced, and that the Lafarge Group had set a precedent for the entire industry.
This October, Vista Pro, a company controlled by Millhouse brokerage, bought deposits containing 36.8 million metric tons of cement rock in the Rostov Region for 10 million rubles ($408,497).
This summer, BasEl Cement, a subsidiary of Basic Element, a diversified investment company with assets in Russia and abroad, and owned by billionaire Oleg Deripaska, paid 84.95 million rubles ($3.47 million) for the Messazhaiskaya and Otnozhnaya deposits, containing an estimated 380 million metric tons of cement rock in the Krasnodar Territory, southern Russia.
As a rule, companies have to pay a lot for oil deposits. In June, energy giant Gazprom bought the Yudokonsky sector in the Krasnoyarsk Territory (East Siberia) worth 30 million rubles ($1.23 million) for 1.09 billion rubles ($44.53 million). This July, Rosneft, the largest state-owned national oil company, raised the price of the Kulindinsky sector, also in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, from 130 million rubles ($5.31 million) to 1.6 billion rubles ($65.36 million).
However, market players are ready to pay a lot for cement rock deposits due to the fact that global cement prices have soared several times over the last two years.
Ivanin said the cement industry's profitability was 40%-50% in terms of EBITDA (earnings before interests tax, deprecation and amortization), and exceeded the price of cement rock deposits.
Siberian Cement vice president Sergei Filenko said the deal could set new standards for the Russian market.
However, Alexander Denisov, marketing and sales director at Alfa Cement, part of Switzerland's Holcim Ltd, a leading global cement supplier, said the Lafarge Group was taking substantial risks because the deposit's commercial potential had not yet been verified.
The subsurface resource use agency for Russia's Southern Federal District, Yugnedra, said the deposit contained about 140 million metric tons of cement rock. An anonymous cement producer said a plant with an annual capacity of 2.5 million metric tons of cement could be built there, and that the deposit could be exploited for 30 years.
Gazeta.ru
Low-cost laptops are not advantageous for Russia
The production of low-cost laptops for the developing world has been started. The computers cost around $188. Analysts say it is not only a social program, but also an advertising campaign. According to their prediction, these laptops can appear only on the black market in Russia.
The Chinese computer maker Quanta started the assembly of the low cost OX laptops as part of the program One Laptop per Child (OLPC).
American computer scientist Nicholas Negroponte from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology first announced his idea expressed for the program in 2002. But the idea was not accepted by everyone. OLPC program opponents said that children of developing nations needed sanitation and access to education, not laptops.
According to Vasily Burov, director for external relations of the League of Independent IT Experts (Linex), the main point of the OLPC program is to attract attention to the problem of computing in the developing world. "It is a circumspect advertising campaign. OLPC knew from the beginning that $100 per laptop and sales levels it aimed for are unrealistic," said experts.
Analysts are sceptical that computers will be available in Russia. In the spring of 2007, Negroponte said that Russia was among the countries interested in purchasing the laptops, but government representatives would not comment. Vladislav Kochetkov, an analyst with the Finam investment company, is absolutely sure that the Russian government is not interested in buying the low-cost laptops. According to him, the state is already running a lot of costly projects, and one of them is to connect schools to the Internet. Another is the Affordable Computer for Every Household project. "The latter project has a lot of lobbyist support and they will not let the OLPC program come to the Russian market," said Kochetkov.
According to Burov, it is not profitable for the government to buy that kind of computers. "Nowadays one can buy a good laptop for $500, which will function better than OX laptop," said the expert. He thinks that it would be necessary to have a powerful lobby or distributors in order for the OLPC program to come to Russia, but that does not seem likely at the moment. "These laptops will appear only on the Russian black market. However, they will be popular only with fans of new technology," Burov said.
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