Translated material
Russian Railways' money may be given to Mikhelson's company
The fight in the government for the Moscow-Kazan high-speed railway megaproject has acquired a real financial dimension. The Ministry of Finance wants to allocate 112 billion rubles, provided for the construction of its site, to Novatek’s Arctic project, writes RBC.
Read more. Novatek needs money for the Utrenny terminal for the Arctic LNG 2 plant.
- The gigantic (21 million tons per year) terminal in the Gulf of Ob will be federal property, but it will be built by Novatek.
- Construction needs to begin this year in order to be in time for the launch of Arctic LNG 2 in 2022.
- In February, Novatek co-owner Leonid Mikhelson wrote to Putin that there was no budget money for the project and asked that it be taken into account “in the next adjustment of the federal budget.”
- A Novatek representative told RBC that the president and government have given instructions to finance the project, including this year.
Context. Novatek has proven that it calculates its projects well and meets deadlines. In December 2018, the company launched the third stage of Yamal LNG ahead of schedule and without exceeding budget. The design capacity of the entire Yamal LNG is 16.5 million tons per year, the cost is $27 billion.
The high-speed railway, which is lobbied by Russian Railways, is the opposite example. In the project with a total cost of 1.7 trillion rubles, as presented, “there is no economy,” Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in February. The first section to Nizhny Novgorod should cost 621.5 billion rubles, of which the budget and Russian Railways should provide 200 billion each.
According to Vedomosti, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev approved the report of transport curator Maxim Akimov on the start of construction of the High Speed Rail to Nizhny Novgorod without Siluanov’s visa .
According to the Ministry of Finance, Russian Railways has doubled or tripled the passenger traffic on the mainline, which is to be built by a third using budget funds. In addition, not all this money will remain in Russia: the road was designed using Chinese technologies, and there are simply no contractors with experience in the country.
Upd. Akimov said that there are no decisions to redistribute money from the high-speed rail project yet, there are different ideas. “This does not deny that the missing funds will need to be found for the Utrenny terminal,” the official noted.
Why is it important. Vladimir Putin must make a decision on the fate of the High-Speed Rail System before the end of March, but it seems that it can be predicted now. Removal from a piece of the budget pie is a sensitive blow to Russian Railways. If it is transferred to Novatek, this will be a success for Mikhelson, who at one time gave Putin the right to symbolically launch Yamal LNG.