Translated material
Gazprom went queen
Natalya Komarova will become governor of the oil district
The governor of the country's main oil region, the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, will be a woman whose career is inextricably linked with Gazprom. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev yesterday proposed to the legislative assembly of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, where 60% of Russian “black gold” is mined, to approve Natalya Komarova, chairman of the State Duma Committee on Natural Resources and an honorary worker in the gas industry, as head of the region. She belongs to the category of Gazprom’s main lobbyists in the lower house of parliament and does not particularly hide it. “I’m not embarrassed when they call me a lobbyist for oil and gas workers,” Ms. Komarova said in 2006, answering a question about supporting the initiatives of Gazprom and Sibneft, which it bought (now Gazprom Neft), “because that in this case I represent the interests of the state.”Natalya Komarova came to the North, to Novy Urengoy, in 1980, when the village of gas workers was given the status of a city of district significance. Two years earlier, industrial gas production began at the Urengoy field, the largest in the country. After 14 years of work in the city executive committee, and then in the city administration, she rose to the post of head of the gas capital of Russia. In 2000-2001, she briefly held the post of first vice-governor of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, after which she was elected from a single-mandate constituency to the State Duma, replacing Viktor Chernomyrdin, who left the chamber. And already in the next convocation she received the Committee on Natural Resources.
Ms. Komarova has a reputation for being a very careful and disciplined person. Unlike Gazprom's most important lobbyist in the Duma, Deputy Speaker Valery Yazev, she rarely took initiative in matters of principle, preferring to act within the “party line.” It is curious that at the end of the year, Mr. Yazev himself almost became governor. He was on the list submitted to the president for consideration in the Volgograd region and was considered the clear favorite - sources in his circle said that the issue had been resolved and he was literally packing his bags. But a few days after the meeting with Valery Yazev, Dmitry Medvedev submitted to the Volgograd parliament the candidacy of the current vice-governor of the region, Anatoly Brovko.
However, even the mere appearance of Ms. Komarova on the list of contenders for the post of Khanty-Mansiysk governor, which United Russia offered to the country’s president at the end of November, looked like a sensation. Experts looked for various signs in this, ranging from the “Gazprom trace” to the president’s desire to immediately double the representation of women in the gubernatorial corps (in company with Valentina Matvienko).
The current governor, Alexander Filipenko, who was also on the United Russia list, was nevertheless considered the favorite. Thanks to oil money, Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug has been and remains one of the most prosperous regions of the country. Over the years of leadership, Mr. Filipenko managed to maintain fairly smooth relations with all oil corporations. But, apparently, these very years played against him. 15 years of leadership of the region, according to new trends from the Kremlin, is too much, and old-time governors are gradually being replaced.
In this context, it is strange that Ms. Komarova was not on the list of candidates from the party in power for the post of governor of the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, submitted a week later than the Khanty-Mansi one. The term of office of Yuri Neelov, who has held this chair since 1994, expires in March. In addition to himself, the president can choose from three more nominees - vice-governor Viktor Kazarin, head of the Purovsky district of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug Dmitry Kobylkin and general director of Gazprom's subsidiary Gazprom Komplektatsiya Igor Fedorov.
It cannot be ruled out that if Mr. Neelov is also replaced, the process of consolidation of entities based on the Tyumen region will return to an active phase. Five years ago, the project of administrative unification of districts with regions stumbled precisely over the heads of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (all other joint-stock companies in Russia were liquidated) and was frozen after the transfer of Tyumen Governor Sergei Sobyanin to Moscow. He first took the post of chief of staff of President Putin, and then moved with him to the government to the post of deputy prime minister and chief of staff. High-ranking sources in the Kremlin say that the issue of consolidation of regions (including the creation of the Tyumen region) remains in the plans, but has not yet regained the status of a priority.
Two more gubernatorial nominations announced yesterday by the Kremlin did not bring sensations. Dmitry Medvedev nominated the general director of Kolmar LLC, Lev Kuznetsov, for the post of governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, and the mayor of Birobidzhan, Alexander Vinnikov, for the post of head of the Jewish Autonomous Region. The post of Krasnoyarsk governor remained vacant after the head of state on January 19 appointed the now former head of the region, Alexander Khloponin, as both deputy prime minister and presidential plenipotentiary representative in the newly created North Caucasus Federal District. After submitting the list of candidates, it became clear that Mr. Khloponin retained control of his team over the Krasnoyarsk Territory: it included the Prime Minister of the regional government Edkham Akbulatov, the Deputy Minister of Finance of Russia and the former first vice-governor of the region Alexander Novak, as well as Mr. Kuznetsov, appointed to this position from the post of first vice-governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. According to some reports, Mr. Khloponin himself proposed appointing 44-year-old Lev Kuznetsov as governor (see Vremya Novostey, February 2) . A graduate of the Moscow Financial Institute, in 1994-1996 he worked at Alfa Bank, then at MFK Bank and Norilsk Nickel. He began his political career in 2001 as the first deputy governor of the Taimyr (Dolgano-Nenets) Autonomous District in the team of Alexander Khloponin, who was then elected head of the district. In 2002-2007 - first vice-governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory (in 2003 he briefly served as mayor of Norilsk). Since 2007 - Advisor to Mr. Khloponin on economic issues, and since 2008, General Director of Kolmar LLC (a holding company that owns controlling stakes in enterprises for the extraction, enrichment and sale of coal).
Alexander Vinnikov, who will lead the Jewish Autonomous Region, was born in 1955 in the village of Krasny Yar, Khabarovsk Territory. He graduated from the Khabarovsk State Pedagogical Institute and worked as a school teacher. Since 1978, he began working first in the district committee, then in the regional committee of the CPSU of the Jewish Autonomous Region. From 1991 to 1992, he worked as deputy chairman of the Leninsky district agro-industrial association of the Jewish Autonomous Region, then was the head of the Leninsky branch of the Logos insurance company. Since 1994, he has headed the administration of Birobidzhan.