MOSCOW, September 4 (RIA Novosti) Mitsubishi looks for site in Russia/ Yukos assets divided without auctions/ Belarus threatens to buy Venezuelan gas if Russia fails to cut prices/ A budget without oil revenues is not for Russia/ Government staff to be penalized for information leaks

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Kommersant

Mitsubishi looks for site in Russia

Mitsubishi representatives have inspected sites for a plant outside St. Petersburg. The Kaluga Region, too, is ready to allocate land and benefits to the Japanese company. But the Japanese automotive concern has set its sights on St. Petersburg because components suppliers are to follow Toyota and Nissan to the region, and a Mitsubishi plant could use these components as well.

In the mid-summer, Mitsubishi said it would only consider car assembly in Russia when its sales on the Russian market topped 90,000 cars (the figure for 2005 was just over 55,000).

But a delay to Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization had a role to play in Mitsubishi's changing its mind on the Russian market. The earlier assumption was Russia would join the WTO in 2007 at the latest and, once it was in, duties on new foreign models would drop gradually from 25% to 15%. Mitsubishi feared that lower-priced imports would compete with the output of its Russian-based plant and investments would not pay off. But with talks with the United States stalling in mid-summer, Russia's WTO admission was postponed indefinitely. Mitsubishi stepped up its dialogue with the Economic Development and Trade Ministry about a possible agreement on industrial assembly (which would allow auto components to be imported at reduced customs tariffs).

St. Petersburg is not the only region ready to offer Mitsubishi land. The administration of the Kaluga Region (where a Volkswagen plant is under construction) said it had had "working contacts with Mitsubishi, but things have not gone to inspecting a site."

St. Petersburg's advantage for Mitsubishi lies in that Japanese concerns Toyota and Nissan have started building their plants here. Suppliers of auto components, which experts told the paper also cater to Mitsubishi in Japan, are expected to follow them to the city. So, Mitsubishi could enjoy an industrial estate infrastructure developed by the local authorities and a facility to manufacture auto components organized with the support of its rivals.

Biznes

Yukos assets divided without auctions

The Natural Resources Ministry is threatening to take the license for the massive Yurubcheno-Tokhomskoye deposit from the East Siberian Oil and Gas Company, a subsidiary of the bankrupt oil company Yukos. If it succeeds, the license is likely to go to state-owned oil company Rosneft, which has already taken interest in the project, without an auction.

The ministry's consultative board says the growth of oil recoverables in Eastern Siberia and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is 93% behind the schedule for early 2006.

The East Siberian Oil and Gas Company launched production on the field in 2002 and undertook a commitment to operate it at full capacity by 2005. However, after tax claims were presented to Yukos, the company failed to finance and develop the deposit in full.

Like other Yukos assets, the East Siberian Oil and Gas Company's shares have been arrested, which does not hamper the revocation of the license and its potential auctioning, said Igor Vasilyev, an analyst with the Financial Bridge brokerage. He says the deposit was put on the queue for license verification back in September 2005, and some time later Governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory Alexander Khloponin said Rosneft could buy the East Siberian company.

The state company's assets are lucrative: the deposit has 64 million metric tons of explored reserves and 172.9 million metric tons of proven reserves, and its output is due to reach 3.5 million metric tons of oil by 2009.

"We don't think the revoked license is likely to be auctioned," said analyst Vasilyev. "A deferment will be granted until a 'proper' company buys it. The threat of a license revocation reduces the value of the East Siberian company, while if Rosneft buys the license, it may be reissued without revocation."

Novye Izvestia

Belarusian leader threatens to buy Venezuelan gas if Russia fails to cut prices

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has protested against a four-fold rise in the price of Russian gas, warning he might turn to a new ally - Venezuela.

Leonid Grigoryev, the director of the Institute of Energy and Finance, said all East European countries face one problem when discussing Russian gas - the lack of fixed pricing factors.

"Western Europe pegs the gas price to growing oil prices, which are reviewed every nine months," he said. "In Eastern Europe, gas prices are not tied automatically to crude, and so their review every year gives rise to conflicts."

He said that Russia probably wants to set higher prices so that its neighbors will not speculate on its resale. "I do not know if Belarus does that, but it is common knowledge that the price for Ukraine was set with that factor in mind," he said.

Independent Belarusian experts see the root of the problem in political relationships.

"Lukashenko is facing a choice between the bad and the very bad," said Yaroslav Romanchuk, an analyst with the Belarusian Strategia think tank.

"The Belarusian economy, as with any socialist economy, is completely dependent on external inputs - Russian gas helps to produce 13% of the republic's GDP.

Russia gains nothing from its subsidies. Belarus, on the other hand, leads the field in restrictions on Russian imports, while Belarusian goods enjoy every kind of preference in Russia."

Strong-arm Russian lobbyists will help Lukashenko avoid the $200 per thousand cubic meter price, he said. These are, first, the oil companies Rosneft, LUKoil and Russneft, the only Russian firms allowed to operate on the Belarussian market. Second, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who has a construction business in Belarus. And third, such traditional allies as the defense industry and the Russian Orthodox Church.

Romanchuk believes Lukashenko's other ace up his sleeve is Gazprom's non-transparency. "While the pricing system at Gazprom is a closed one, the company's demands can always be questioned. But that is a problem for the Russians to address," he said.

Vremya Novostei

A budget without oil revenues is not for Russia

The question of how to spend Russia's oil revenues now occupies economists, politicians and state officials to no end. According to Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, the country needs to balance its budget without relying on oil and gas. And while the idea appears sound, there are too many hidden problems, experts argue.

"It is not that we should spend only earnings from sectors other than oil," said Yevgeny Gavrilenkov, pro-rector of the Higher School of Economics. "It is just that we need to see clearly our dependence on oil prices and to make commitments based on that analysis."

"Today there are significant complaints about how budget spending is allocated," he said. "Such policies can lead to a deadlock in the long term. Spending on 'general state needs' in next year's budget has surged by almost 50%, which is doing nothing but promoting the growth of bureaucracy."

Igor Nikolayev, director of strategic analysis with FBK, said, "Only selected foreign examples - for instance, Norway and Kazakhstan - are cited. Why not look at the UAE, which invests huge oil revenues in infrastructure?" All the more so as Russia's strategic commodities will be in demand for a long time to come, and that even if it runs out of oil and gas, it will have water and timber left.

"If we draw up a budget without taking into account oil revenues, and then start to accumulate them, given that Russian oil will last 40 years and gas 80 years, we would be admitting that that money would be spent on trivial things in future," Nikolayev said.

"That is not a good way to achieve structural change in the economy," he said. Such a prolonged delay in spending oil revenues keeps the country technologically weak and undermines its economic development, he said.

Vedomosti

Government staff to be penalized for information leaks

Some fairly high-ranking Russian bureaucrats trade in official information, government staff members say. Recently, some functionaries were severely punished for leaking information, while the Federal Guard Service was ordered to tighten control over paperwork.

According to some officials, the government's chief of staff, Sergei Naryshkin, issued an order August 29, which said that Leonid Bondarenko, counsellor of the energy resources division of the sectoral development department, was fired for revealing official information, and that Andrei Ryakhovsky, head of the office work and supervision department, and Valery Palkin, head of a unit in the same department, were reprimanded.

According to well-informed colleagues, Bondarenko was detained by FSB officers while passing a draft government regulation on investment policy in the power industry to a TNK-BP representative.

Former deputy minister of economic development Mikhail Dmitriyev described the incident as unique: "I have never heard of a person being detained for passing non-secret information," he said.

"No one has yet been fired for such a thing," said one White House insider. If one strictly follows the letter of the law, all papers, regardless of their security rating, refer to official ones and are not to be taken out, said another official. Nevertheless documents were often "taken home to read," he said.

A government functionary sees Bondarenko's punishment as the equivalent of shooting at sparrows with a cannon: "We classify what needs to be known by everyone, while 3% to 4% of the data that is of state importance is not kept secret."

His colleague said, "This is a demonstrative punishment, because trade in information has become a common practice with us."

Two years ago, federal civil servants had their salaries dramatically raised, but information peddling still continues. Businessmen ask for materials connected with oil, gas, power, federal target programs and construction of large projects, a White House executive said.

In the regions, officials withhold instructions meant for businesses in order to offer them later for cash, added Georgy Satarov, president of Indem Foundation.