Nezavisimaya Gazeta: Failure to freeze oil production will drive crude price down
In the run-up to the upcoming informal OPEC meeting in Algeria where representative of the cartel’s participants may discuss an initiative to freeze crude production, many factors indicate that the talks will lead nowhere, Nezavisimaya writes on Wednesday. The experts polled by the newspaper evaluated the probability of this decision materializing at 5% at best.
Dmitry Lukashov, a senior analyst at IFC Markets, said "the current meeting of OPEC exporters in Algeria may definitely be considered clumsy." "Sharp contradictions between the cartel’s members will be the main reason for its failure, just like in May. All realize that the rivalry has gone beyond reasonable boundaries, but there so far has not been a single opinion on how to reduce supply," he said.
"First, Iran is not willing to limit the level of crude production and export to keep the competitiveness of Russian and Arab oil down. Second, Nigeria and Libya are seeking to gradually return the volume of oil to the global market, which had been cut off from foreign consumers due to intensive terrorist activity in those countries. Third, Iraq does not plan to lose momentum in the future and boost energy production and supplies," a member of the expert council of the Union of Oil and Gas Producers Eldar Kasayev told the newspaper, adding that "this year oil exporters are unlikely to reach a compromise and limit production."
Izvestia: Russia’s Justice Ministry to bring jailed pilot home
Lyubov Yaroshenko, the of mother of Kostantin Yaroshenko, who is currently serving his lengthy jail term in the United States, told Izvestia that the pilot’s lawyer Aleskey Tarasov will draw up a request to the Justice Ministry on his transfer to the Russian Federation.
Russia’s Justice Ministry told Izvestia that it is expecting a request from Yaroshenko’s family or from him personally to transfer him back to his home country in accordance with the 1983 Strasbourg Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons. Once the ministry receives the document, it will be ready to submit an official request to the relevant US government structures.
"Of course, we want the Russian Justice Ministry to submit this request to the United States again, it was not in vain that we filed the request in 2012, despite being turned away. And it is not in vain that we signed the document from the Federal Bureau of Prisons on my son’s transfer to Russia," Lyubov Yaroshenko told the newspaper, adding that she was not aware of the "need to speak out about the desire to get Konstantin back to his native country."
RBC: Moscow planning to redirect oil exports from Baltic to Russian ports
Russia’s Special Presidential Envoy for Environmental Activity, Ecology and Transport, Sergey Ivanov, will discuss re-routing exports of oil products from the Baltic states to Russian ports with top managers from oil companies, Transneft and Russian Railways, RBC newspaper writes citing three sources close to the companies invited to the meeting. Belarusian companies may also be obliged to join the initiative, the paper says.
Earlier this month, Nikolay Tokarev, President of Transneft, Russia’s pipeline monopoly, met with President Vladimir Putin where he said that the country would be able to completely redirect exports of oil products from Baltic to Russian ports in Ust-Luga, Primorsk and Novorossiysk. One of the sources told RBC that Ivanov’s meeting will focus on taking measures to enhance the attractiveness of the oil products transfer via Russian ports in order to strengthen oil producers’ economic advantage.
According to RBC, two Russian oil companies welcome the initiative to re-route exports to Russian ports. A source close to Rosneft says the company "is not going to feed the ports of countries that support EU sanctions against Russia, and is ready to gradually redirect its cargoes to Russian ports by 2018." Analysts interviewed by the newspaper say that in case Russia manages to redirect 4 mln tonnes of oil products from the Baltics its annual forecasted income would reach around $16 mln. Furthermore, if the plan to export all 9 mln tonnes of cargoes via Russian ports is fully accomplished by 2018, the additional benefit would total $33 mln.
Izvestia: Telecom market players, regulators launch tests of messengers for civil servants
A group of experts consisting 50 persons will spend the next two weeks testing messengers developed specifically for public officials, Director of Project Activities at the Institute for the Development of Internet Arseny Shcheltsyn told Izvestia daily. The group consists of representatives from ICANN, (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications and others will select 8-10 messengers out of 34 alternatives.
Also, he said, the group contains top managers from IT majors who "have the experience required for participating in this project." Megafon, Rostelecom, Rostec, Beeline and Mail.Ru Group are among those who have submitted their products for testing.
According to Dmitry Satin, founder of UsabilityLabs and former adviser to the Communication Minister, civil servants need a messenger. "Our officials use messengers as they provide far more intense and quicker correspondence than e-mails. But the issue is that it is not clear when a top-secret piece of information may slip up and specialized channels are necessary for this type of information to avoid leaks of data," he said, adding that "should it be state run, it would be possible to control what is happening with the information it has."
However, he said, the question of whether or not ordinary citizens should have access to such messengers is still open.
Vedomosti: Israeli pharmaceutical giant to produce drug to fight multiple sclerosis in Russia
Israel’s multinational drug manufacturer will localize production of the cutting-edge medication on the premises of Russia’s Nanolek (Rusnano’s portfolio company) factory in the Kirov Region. The corresponding agreement was sealed on September 27, Vedomosti business daily writes with reference to representatives of both companies.
Nanolek founded in 2011, has already invested 6 bln rubles in the drug’s manufacture, its representative said. Teva, which is currently the fifth-biggest pharmaceutical producer on the Russian market with a 2.8% market share as of 2015, will contribute its technology.
First, the drug company plans to localize the production of Glatiramer acetate, the originator of copaxone for treating multiple sclerosis. First deliveries are planned for the second half of 2017, while the complete production cycle will be launched by the end of 2018, a Teva representative told the newspaper.
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