| Azerbaijan Halts Oil Transit Trough Russia to Europe | | Posted Tuesday, January 09, 2007 1:21:11 PM by Blog57 Team | | Azerbaijani oil supplies via Russia to Europe have been halted for more than a week in an energy price row with Russia, the Xinhua news agency reports quoting a statement by the Azerbaijan?s state-owned oil company SOCAR. The dispute flared up after Russian state gas firm Gazprom increased the cost of its gas exports to Azerbaijan to 235 U.S. dollars per 1,000 cubic meters from last year?s price of 110 dollars. The price hike prompted the oil-rich Caspian sea nation to stop importing Russian gas, and close down the oil supply to Europe via Russia on Jan. 1. In 2006, SOCAR exported 1.172 million tons of oil via the Russian-controlled pipeline running from Bake to the Russia Black Sea port of Novorossiisk. Azerbaijan?s state-owned oil company said its country had refused to meet Russia?s price demand, and the crude would be used domestically instead as fuel for power stations.... | |
| |
| | | Russia Names Chair for Aircraft Company | | Posted Friday, November 10, 2006 7:20:52 AM by Blog57 Team | | Russia's defense minister will chair the board of a new state-controlled aircraft corporation aimed at reinvigorating the nation's aviation industry, news agencies reported Thursday. President Vladimir Putin approved the move at a meeting to discuss the holding company's future plans, according to Interfax, ITAR-Tass and RIA-Novosti. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said the corporation would have four divisions: combat aircraft, civil aviation, transport planes and an assembly-unit business. A government commission overseeing reform in the aviation sector elected the head of Russia's MiG aircraft manufacturer Alexei Fyodorov as president of the United Aircraft Corporation, and approved the charter for the new company at a meeting last week. Russian officials have long spoken of the need for consolidation in an industry that in its Soviet heyday rolled out 700 aircraft a year and accounted for a quarter of the world's civilian fleet.... | |
| |
| | | Russia seeks lift at China air show | | Posted Tuesday, October 31, 2006 11:07:00 PM by Blog57 Team | | Russia's aerospace companies were out in force as the world's aircraftmakers gathered Monday for China's biggest air show, looking to the booming Chinese market to drive sales. Chicago-based Boeing Co., Airbus SAS and other companies from 18 countries were displaying aircraft, engines and other equipment at the five-day exhibition, which starts Tuesday in this southern Chinese boomtown near Hong Kong. Russian companies were displaying warplanes and civilian aircraft, as well as missiles and military electronics, reflecting China's status as Moscow's leading arms-export market and Russian ambitions to expand in commercial aviation. Russian companies were showing civilian cargo and passenger planes and a giant military transport, while Boeing and Airbus displayed only scale models of their planes.... | |
| |
| | | Rice prods Russia on its press | | Posted Sunday, October 22, 2006 11:11:31 AM by Blog57 Team | | Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Saturday delivered a symbolic rebuke to Russia over shrinking press freedoms even as she courted President Vladimir Putin for help punishing Iran over its nuclear program. Rice made a point of scheduling an interview with Novaya Gazeta, the newspaper where a reporter critical of Russian policy in neighboring Chechnya had worked before her murder this month. Rice also met with the reporter's son. Rice's one-day trip to Moscow followed talks in Asia last week over North Korea's nuclear test on Oct. 9. Russia voted for U.N. penalties against North Korea after the test, and the United States is seeking Russian cooperation for an upcoming vote on sanctions against Iran. Yet even before Rice arrived in the Russian capital, her Russian counterpart said Moscow will not allow the Security Council to be used for punitive measures against Iran.... | |
| |
| | | Minister: Russia, U.S. Nearing WTO Deal | | Posted Friday, October 13, 2006 11:04:49 PM by Blog57 Team | | Russia's trade minister said Friday that Russia and the U.S. could seal a bilateral agreement on Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization within two weeks, news agencies reported. The United States also said it hopes talks with Russia can be wrapped up this month. Russia had earlier hoped to sign a bilateral agreement with Washington as the centerpiece of the Group of Eight Summit, which it hosted in St. Petersburg in July, but talks foundered over sanitary inspections for U.S. beef and pork imports. Russia had refused a U.S. demand for an immediate increase in imports of American beef and pork before Russia completed a review of America's food inspection system, due to be finished this month. "I think that in the coming two weeks we will reach a final agreement," Economic Development and Trade Minister German Gref was quoted as telling his Latvian counterpart, Aygar Shtokenbergs.... | |
| |
| | | Russia's Putin Warns Georgia: Nobody can Blackmail us | | Posted Thursday, October 05, 2006 1:06:44 PM by Blog57 Team | | Though Georgia released the four Russian military officers arrested for spying, Moscow's anger toward the Tbilisi government has not ceased. Continuing economic sanctions against Georgia, Russian President Vladimir Putin said "I would not advise anyone to talk to Russia in the language of provocation and blackmail." Speaking to the leaders of political parties with MPs in the Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, Putin shortly mentioned the latest crisis with Georgia. Noting that he was addressing Georgia and third party countries in particular, Putin said "I would not advise anyone to talk to Russia in the language of provocation and blackmail." In a telephone conversation with U.S. President George W. Bush, Putin emphasized "no third party country should take steps." A notice assessing the latest situation with Georgia was distributed in Russian Parliament's lower house, the Duma.... | |
| |
| | | EU doesn't expect war over Georgia-Russia tensions | | Posted Thursday, October 05, 2006 3:09:34 AM by Blog57 Team | | The European Union's foreign policy chief said on Wednesday he did not think tensions between Russia and Georgia would lead to war, but urged moderation by both sides. Javier Solana brushed aside a call from Georgia's pro-Western president, Mikhail Saakashvili, for EU peacekeepers to replace Russian ones in breakaway regions where Tbilisi accuses Moscow of interference. .... | |
| |
| | | Iran And Russia To resume talks on Bushehr NPP | | Posted Tuesday, September 26, 2006 7:04:34 AM by Blog57 Team | | Moscow (RIAN) Sep 25 - The nuclear power chiefs of Russia and Iran have agreed to continue talks Tuesday on bilateral cooperation, including on a controversial nuclear power plant Russia is helping to build in the Islamic Republic. Russia is helping Iran build the plant at Bushehr, 400 kilometers (250 miles) southwest of the capital, Tehran. The NPP is being constructed under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog. "Gholamreza Aghazadeh, Iran's vice president and head of the Atomic Energy Organization, and Sergei Kiriyenko, the head of Russia's Federal Nuclear Power Agency, will continue talks on bilateral cooperation including on construction of Bushehr NPP on Tuesday, September 26," Sergei Novikov, a spokesman for the Russian nuclear agency, said.... | |
| |
| | | Myanmar, Russia, India to explore gas in Myanmar | | Posted Sunday, September 17, 2006 11:13:42 AM by Blog57 Team | | Oil companies of Myanmar, Russia and India have agreed to explore oil and natural gas at a block lying off the Mottama offshore area, the official newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported Sunday. Under a production sharing contract initiated by the state-run Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, JSC Zarubezhneft Itera Oil and Gas Company of the Russian Federation and the Sun Group of India, the three companies will conduct oil and gas exploration and production at block M-8 in the offshore area. It is the first time that the Russian Federation gets involved in the oil and gas development in Myanmar, while India has been engaged in the sector with two Indian companies of the ONGC Videsh Ltd and the Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) working in partnership with South Korea's Daewoo International and South Korean Gas Corporation in offshore gas exploitation at two blocks of A-1 and A-3 off the western Rakhine coast.... | |
| |
| | | No plans for Russia to break existing PSAs, sign new ones | | Posted Thursday, September 07, 2006 5:26:46 AM by Blog57 Team | | ST. PETERSBURG, September 6 (RIA Novosti) - New tax legislation makes it unnecessary for Russia to sign any new production sharing agreements (PSA), an economics ministry official said Wednesday. PSAs have been used as an instrument to attract investment in minerals extraction, and were introduced when oil prices were relatively low in the 1990s. The agreements made foreign investors in Russia exempt from nearly all taxes. "Talking about new projects, the new tax regime makes it possible to effectively use these projects [on developing deposits], and new agreements are unlikely to be necessary," Kirill Androsov, deputy minister of economic development and trade, told the first Russia-Japan investment forum. But he added that Russia would nevertheless continue to implement the agreements it has already concluded.... | |
| |
| |
|
|
