| Irkutskenergo shareholders act in unison The annual meeting of shareholders of Irkutskenergo, an energy system that is not part of RAO UES of Russia, was much calmer than the extraordinary one in April. The shareholders, “to be on the safe side,” stocked up on a fresh court ruling prohibiting interfering with the holding of the meeting. But no one tried to disrupt it: on the main issues, the large shareholders - the state and metallurgical companies (SUAL and Russian Aluminum) - managed to agree in advance. The main items on the agenda were the election of the board of directors and the adoption of a new version of the charter, according to which the appointment of the general director will be carried out by the board of directors of Irkutskenergo.
The appointment of the head of the energy company will take place on July 4. According to a member of the board of directors of Irkutskenergo, deputy general director of Siberian Aluminum, Andrei Gorbatikov, ten candidates are being considered for this post, among them there are “representatives of the management of other energy systems - Siberia and the center of Russia.” As the Vremya Novostei newspaper learned, it is an outsider - an experienced energy manager - who is considered as the most likely candidate for the general director of Irkutskenergo, but who he is has not yet been found out. The newspaper's source said that the candidacy had not been agreed upon with all members of the new board of directors. In the meantime, the duties of the head are performed by the first deputy of the absent general director, Sergei Kuimov.
The composition of the newly elected board of directors, according to its chairman, Deputy Minister of Property Relations Sergei Kosarev, “completely reflected the composition of Irkutskenergo shareholders.” Thus, there are no longer representatives of RAO UES of Russia on the council (there were two of them), there is no Deputy Minister of Energy Viktor Kudryavy, and there is no former energy system manager, current candidate for Irkutsk governor Valentin Mezhevich. It is noteworthy that the representative of the previous management, Mr. Kuimov, did not get onto the board of directors, but the financial director of Irkutskenergo, Mikhail Slobodin, whose candidacy was proposed by the Irkutsk Aluminum Plant, part of SUAL.
The new board of directors of the Irkutsk energy system will have to resolve the possible issue of issuing an additional share issue. According to the Vremya Novostey newspaper, the government is currently discussing the problem of transferring hydroelectric dams, which are state-owned and received by energy enterprises for free use, to regional energy companies in exchange for their shares. Chairman of the Board of Directors of Irkutskenergo Sergei Kosarev believes that such a scenario is not excluded, but he considers it premature to talk about it.
For Irkutskenergo, the implementation of this scheme means that the state may receive a controlling stake in the company, and shareholders - aluminum companies - may lose influence in the region's power industry. The state needs control over Irkutskenergo primarily to establish higher tariffs for aluminum smelters. As you know, now in Irkutsk they are only 18 kopecks. (0.62 cents) per kWh. A simple arithmetic calculation shows that the price of the issue is $300 million: Irkutsk metallurgists consume 22 billion kWh per year, at today's tariff they must pay $136.4 million for electricity year. If electricity is supplied to them at world prices - 2 cents per kWh, then with constant consumption they will have to pay 440 million dollars. But even if they pay at a tariff of 1.05 cents per kWh, as large industrial consumers pay in Russia, then the energy company should receive $100 million more per year.
Collecting more money from metallurgists is a well-known dream of the head of RAO UES of Russia, Anatoly Chubais. He believes that low tariffs for them are “a powder keg laid under the energy system.” It is possible, some experts believe, that it was Chubais who came up with the idea of how to force aluminum workers to pay more through the privatization of dams (aluminum smelters in Russia, as a rule, are “tied” to hydroelectric power plants).
It is clear that the metallurgists will try to block the decision on the additional issue of shares - fortunately, the composition of the board of directors is proportional to the ownership structure of Irkutskenergo. In this case, experts suggest, the state will have to include administrative resources, and primarily at the level of the Irkutsk governor. In a month, elections for the head of the Irkutsk regional administration will take place, and most likely the issue of Irkutskenergo, with the support of one candidate or another from the federal center, will be of no small importance. Nikolay GORELOV, Irkutsk |
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