Heatstroke

Alexander Remezov is preparing to oust Mosenergo in the capital's energy market

The Moscow United Energy Company (MOEK), controlled by the Moscow government, as its general director Alexander Remezov said yesterday, plans to build gas turbine units with a capacity of 1,500 MW of electricity and 1,500 Gcal/hour of heat at each of its 14 thermal stations by 2015. According to him, this resource will allow the company's controlling shareholders to achieve a ten percent share in the city's electricity market. As Mr. Remezov expects, MOEK, which currently produces 34% of the heat consumed by the capital, will be able to displace the market leader, the Gazprom-controlled company Mosenergo (64% of the city's energy consumption).

All this will be possible, among other things, because energy sales as a result of, as the head of MOEK put it, “the clear and consistent implementation of the Moscow government’s plans” to consolidate the electric grid complex ended up in the hands of metropolitan officials. However, the head of Gazprom’s electric power department, Denis Fedorov, in an interview with Vremya Novostei, painted the opposite picture: “In a year or two, maximum three, a law on heat supply will be adopted, and competition will appear in heat supplies. And as soon as competition appears, then, sorry, but MOEK has no chance . We have large stations, power units, high efficiency. We will always have less construction costs per 1 kW of installed power. That is, we will beat MOEK on the investment component, our unit costs for both heat and electricity will be lower due to the higher unit capacity of power units, and accordingly our tariff will be lower. Once the market comes, all boilers and small power plants will be forced to operate at peak mode at best.” Mr. Remezov, however, did not speak about this yesterday.

But, he said, MOEK’s ambitions are clearly not limited to the capital market. According to Mr. Remezov, Moscow thermal power engineers are ready to “disseminate experience” mainly in the Central and Southern Federal Districts. In the near future, city heat power engineers plan to “put municipal networks in order” in Ivanovo and Kursk, Yaroslavl and Kostroma. As Mr. Remezov noted, unlike Moscow officials who accumulate production and networks in their hands, their regional colleagues are “ready to sell everything to commercial structures.” True, after such recognition, the general director of MOEK assured that in the regions his company will limit itself to the role of a hired manager and “will not lay claim to property rights.”

In Moscow, MOEK intends to continue the technical re-equipment of the company that began last year, which could lead to a significant reduction in personnel. In particular, mass layoffs could affect a company's emergency services.

Let us recall that the program for modernizing the capital's heating networks, estimated at 65 billion rubles, is designed until 2012. According to Mr. Remezov, increasing the service life of new equipment will inevitably raise the issue of an excessive number of “emergency workers” before the management of MOEK. And although the mass introduction of modern pipelines (the service life of which is 40-50 years) with a total length of 4 thousand km will be completed only in four years, the rotation of personnel of repair teams, according to the head of MOEK, can begin in the near future.

According to Mr. Remezov, the accident rate on the company’s networks has decreased by 1.5 times over the past three years. If during the 2005/06 heating season the number of pipeline damage and associated consumer outages reached 1.5 thousand, then this winter there were no more than 800 emergency cases. In addition, MOEK, according to him, is gradually reaching optimal levels by European standards proportion of repair and reconstruction costs. The ideal situation is when the company allocates up to 20% of investments to repairs, and 80% to reconstruction of networks. MOEK is gradually approaching the proportion of 40 to 60. This year 4-4.5 billion rubles. About 6 billion rubles will be spent on repairs. - for reconstruction. “The number of regional emergency services, each of which employs about 150 people, has not changed recently, as an effective manager I must say that this is wrong, they should certainly be reduced,” said Mr. Remezov.

In addition, the general director of MOEK “has big complaints about contractors and his own specialists in the installation and operation of new pipelines,” but they are more likely to undergo massive professional retraining. For example, last year 1,300 company employees have already improved their skills. The city heat and power company will also need professional resources in connection with the Moscow government's policy of expanding its own electricity production.

Yulia KHOMCHENKO