| Top managers of E.ON-Ruhrgas paid a return visit to Gazprom The leaders of the German energy concern E.ON - Wulf Bernotat and Burkhard Bergmann - held a working meeting with the head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, at the Bogorodskoye Reception House near Moscow. Like the troika's talks in Dusseldorf in September, the conversation, which lasted about four hours, was devoted to the development of cooperation within the framework of a memorandum signed by the companies on July 8 in the presence of the countries' leaders Vladimir Putin and Gerhard Schröder. And it was also left with virtually no official comments from the parties. A joint statement from Gazprom and E.ON-Ruhrgas AG states that “the work on concretizing the plans in the field of electricity and gas agreed upon in the memorandum of understanding dated July 8, 2004 is progressing successfully.”
In the summer, as you know, the parties outlined sensational guidelines for cooperation. For the first time, Gazprom agreed to allow a large foreign company to develop significant gas reserves in Russia, and in exchange to gain access to the end-use market in Germany, one of the largest in Europe. In addition, the parties agreed on joint activities in the electric power industry, thereby, on the one hand, opening the way for the influx of foreign investment into the Russian system, and on the other, turning Gazprom into a full-cycle energy giant on a European scale. The signed memorandum recorded an agreement to enter into specific projects and sign the corresponding detailed package of documents in October.
However, as expected (see Vremya Novostey, July 9) , the negotiations are not going well. And yesterday, top managers of the companies decided to postpone the deadline for signing the package by two months, i.e. until the New Year. However, a source at Gazprom assures that this is not due to the presence of insurmountable contradictions between the parties. “The scale of the cooperation under discussion is such that time is needed to carefully consider its details,” says a representative of the concern. “In addition, new proposals arise during the negotiations - for example, the German side announced its intention to offer Gazprom to jointly build new electric power facilities in Hungary and Italy - which also deserve attention and require time to be understood.”
It is possible that the deadlines for the preparation of specific projects were shifted to 2005 due to uncertainty in the sphere of reforming the Russian electric power industry. As is known, the government plans to consider the issue of selling wholesale generating companies only in December. At the same time, it is far from certain that any decision will be made. This situation prevents the development of options for the participation of German partners in the Russian electricity sector, in which they show high interest. The importance of the electric power topic in bilateral negotiations is confirmed by the fact that on the eve of the arrival of E.ON executives, Mr. Miller publicly announced an increase in Gazprom’s stake in RAO UES of Russia to “over 10%.”
In addition, in connection with the signing of comprehensive documents on the settlement of Russian-Ukrainian gas problems in July-August, Gazprom to some extent lost interest in the project to build the North European Gas Pipeline. Taking into account the need to ensure that gas contracted by Gazprom in Central Asia is brought to the European market, the development of the southern export corridor (through Ukraine) now appears to be a higher priority. And the deputy chairman of the board of Gazprom for export, Yuri Komarov, in an interview with Vremya Novostey, said that the simultaneous construction of gas pipelines through the Baltic and Ukraine is impractical, which means they compete in terms of implementation time.
Meanwhile, it was in exchange for the participation of the E.ON concern in the multi-billion dollar NEGP project that Gazprom agreed to discuss with it joint gas production at the large Yuzhno-Russkoye field in Western Siberia (which was chosen as the basis of the raw material base for loading the offshore pipeline). The possibility of producing gas in Russia is the main subject of interest on the part of the German partner Gazprom. Alexey GRIVACHS, Ivan GORDEEV |
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