New Russian military doctrine approval pending final START talks / Russia wins new oil battle against Belarus / Rosneft discovers huge oilfield in East Siberia /Does General Motors suffer from a Russian aversion? /

Vedomosti

New Russian military doctrine approval pending final START talks

Although a new Russian military doctrine was to have been published immediately after the New Year celebrations, it has not happened yet. Nor has President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree approving the document that was drafted for the last seven years.

According to some reports, the delay is due to a reluctance to hinder Russian-U.S. talks on a new strategic arms reduction treaty. A Kremlin official explained the delay as being due to technical and bureaucratic reasons.

One of the document's authors said the doctrine was unlikely to be approved pending the end of Russian-U.S. START talks because any irritant capable of influencing the talks must be ruled out. Another author said he was surprised by this approach because the doctrine had been widely discussed in the regions and by the academic community, and that Washington would not be surprised by its contents.

The new START treaty may become a factor that will have to be included in the doctrine, said General of the Army Makhmut Gareyev, president of the Russian Academy of Military Science and one of the doctrine's co-authors. The Security Council has approved the document in principle, Gareyev said.

Russian tradition implies that any military doctrine is an ideological policy document that does not necessarily stipulate the statistical parameters of strategic nuclear forces like those of the START treaty, said Pavel Podvig, a researcher at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

A source close to the Security Council said the 15-page doctrine, which did not contain such statistics, described hypothetical military threats and possible responses.

As with the previous version, approved in 2000, the document describes a hypothetical first strike, in case Russia or its allies are attacked or if the state's existence is jeopardized.

Although the doctrine does not describe the army reform process, it stipulates new requirements for the national defense industry which must manufacture military-equipment components at Russian plants during the entire service life of such equipment.

Multi-role weapons systems featuring interchangeable components are envisaged for the Air Force, the Army, the Navy and other military services. Moreover, different agencies and departments must use interchangeable military equipment.

The standardization of weapons and components is important. It will save us tens of billions of rubles, said Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies and presidium member of the Russian Defense Ministry's Public Advisory Council.

Nevertheless, the narrow departmental interests of the defense industry and the Armed Forces have so far prevailed over state interests.

Kommersant

Russia wins new oil battle against Belarus

Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who is responsible for the Russian oil industry, and his Belarusian counterpart, Vladimir Semashko, signed agreements on Wednesday that buried Belarus's hopes for increased duty-free Russian oil deliveries.

A few hours before the talks, Belarus blocked part of Moscow's initiatives at a meeting of the Customs Union Commission. Eventually, Belarus negotiated a future increase in oil transit fees to a level close to Russia's Transneft. For the time being, the ruble-denominated fee will grow by a mere 11%, while Belarus will no longer make a profit from refining cheap Russian oil.

The sides declined to fully disclose the content of their compromise after the talks. Semashko commented briefly that the cost of Russian oil transportation across Belarus would go up 11%. Russia plans to export 21.5 million metric tons of oil via that route in 2010. However, Semashko added, Belarus will be able to raise its transit fee "significantly" by October, after presenting Russia with relevant "calculations," or to raise the fees gradually "by the rate of inflation plus 3%."

Considering Belarus's earlier threat to raise oil transit cost ten-fold, it will now take seven or eight years to reach that level through these step-by-step hikes. Russian government sources familiar with the talks say this is certainly an exaggeration. According to them, Belarus has agreed to set its rates in Russian rubles, and will have to take into account, when calculating the fee, the cost of "alternative routes" of oil transportation - that is, the cost of oil shipments by the Russian monopoly Transneft to Primorsk. Russia's "duty-free quota" has not changed, meaning Russia's export duty will be fully applied to oil supplied to Belarus in excess of 6.3 million tons.

This last clause has effectively killed Belarusian state oil refineries' hopes to make a profit by processing cheap Russian oil at least at the 2009 level, and will force them to seek new investors.

The Russian government sources explained that Russia and Belarus will hold talks within the next few months to focus on the entire range of energy issues, including oil, gas, and nuclear power plants construction. The talks will probably be scheduled before October 1, the date set for revising the oil supply volume. It is also obvious that "the oil issue" will not be a top priority in Russia-Belarus relations until July 1, the deadline for the two countries to eliminate, under the Customs Union agreement, their internal customs borders. Russia's energy warfare has once again proved effective.

Kommersant, Vedomosti, RBC Daily

Rosneft discovers huge oilfield in East Siberia

Rosneft has discovered a huge oilfield in the Mogdinsky block in East Siberia, for which it paid 1.3 million rubles ($42,920 at the current exchange rate) in a tender in 2006. Russia's largest state crude producer outbid Surgutneftegaz by raising the starting price 12-fold, although the block's reserves were tentatively estimated at only 20 million metric tons (147 million bbl).

The Savostyanovskoye oilfield, located 200 km (124 miles) from the East Siberia - Pacific Ocean oilfield, reportedly has 160.2 million tons (1.18 billion bbl) of C1+C2 recoverable reserves. It is one of the largest oilfields discovered in the last decade, but the company needs guaranteed privileges to develop it.

Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin about the field's discovery on Wednesday. It is a strategic field, he said, and Russian legislation limits the access of foreign companies to fields that have reserves estimated at more than 70 million tons (514.5 million bbl) of oil. However, there will be no problems with Savostyanovskoye because it was discovered by a state-controlled company.

Savostyanovskoye accounts for some 25% of the oil reserves discovered last year (approximately 620 million tons, or 4.56 billion bbl). The last time a comparable discovery was made in the last decade was LUKoil's Vladimir Filanovsky offshore field in the Caspian Sea with A+B+C1+C2 recoverable reserves exceeding 215 million tons (1.58 billion bbl).

This is the first time Rosneft has reported discovering a new field in the Irkutsk Region. In accordance with its licensing agreements, the company must drill the first exploration wells in 2009-2010. Rosneft is currently drafting plans to develop Savostyanovskoye but cannot say when production will start.

The exploration results show that Rosneft was right to pay so much for the licenses, said Vitaly Kryukov, an analyst at the investment and financial company Kapital.

Lev Snykov from VTB Capital said such huge reserves could have an estimated value of between $1.5 billion and $3 billion. However, the local infrastructure is underdeveloped and it would take billions of rubles to develop the oilfield.

Alexei Kokin, an analyst with the Metropol investment financial company, said the development of Savostyanovskoye could take at least five years.

Rosneft is unlikely to speed up the process without getting the tax breaks promised for the East Siberian projects, said Denis Borisov, an analyst at the Bank of Moscow.

However, this could pose a problem because the Finance Ministry is fighting to cancel the zero duty on oil produced in East Siberia, which came into force in December 2009. The ministry fears that the zero duty will greatly increase the chances of a profit shortfall in the federal budget.

Izvestia

Does General Motors suffer from a Russian aversion?

Giant auto maker General Motors has at last sold its money-losing Saab division for $400 million to a Dutch sports car manufacturer, Spyker, on condition that Spyker's majority holder, Russian banker Vladimir Antonov, parts with his shares. This is the second anti-Russian move involving GM recently - last year the company refused to sell Opel to a consortium including Sberbank.

GM spent a year looking for a Saab buyer, and could not find one. GM was willing to simply discontinue it. Now it will sell it to the Dutch firm but on condition that the purchaser replaces its Russian shareholder.

Finam brokerage analyst Konstantin Romanov believes GM wants to prevent a new rival from appearing in Russia. For now Russia's position is weak, but this is due to its technological lag. Low cost resources, strategic geographic location with regard to Europe and the CIS, state support, etc. will sooner or later bear fruit. Up-to-date technology made available to Russian companies could help them challenge the traditional leaders in a number of markets in the future. This does not suit GM," the analyst says.

Some assets are sold to Russian companies, but as a rule they are beset with problems, require investment and are not at the cutting edge of technology. Yet as soon as a transaction concerns a world brand, such as Opel or Saab, even if loss-making, the American company puts the brakes on the deal, without even trying to look politically correct. Of course, Saab also produces aircraft and military electronics, but this Swedish business is not related to GM and is not part of the latest deal.

Nikita Maslennikov, an adviser from the Institute of Contemporary Development, does not believe, that the American company wanted to hurt Russia: "It may well be that Conversbank [Antonov's asset] is plagued by problems. Each deal has a history of its own. There are examples of Russian businesses acquiring high-technology companies abroad, including American businesses concerned with hydrogen energy."

Overseas businessmen are willing to see Russians as partners, but are opposed to their playing a controlling role, said Dmitry Abzalov, a leading analyst at the Center for Current Politics. An example is the symbolic presence of Russian capital in the European EADS corporation (which manufactures Airbus airliners). This relationship has provided Russia with more headaches than benefits.

MOSCOW, January 28 (RIA Novosti)

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