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MOSCOW — A consortium led by LUKoil won a tender to develop the supergiant West Qurna-2 oil field in Iraq on Saturday, in a strategic victory for the firm that has been over a decade in the making. “Today we scored a deserved victory, and along with our Norwegian partners we intend to comply with all the obligations we took on to develop West Qurna-2 oil field in the interests of the Iraqi people and our shareholders,” LUKoil president Vagit Alekperov said in a statement Saturday. “This project is strategically important to our company.” LUKoil will develop the field, which has an estimated 12.9 billion barrels of recoverable reserves, along with Norway’s Statoil. |
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THE LONGEST NIGHT
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
Girls take part in the Santa Lucia procession in the Swedish Lutheran Church on Malaya Konyushennaya Ulitsa on Sunday evening. The event is usually held on the longest night of the year. The procession ends with choral singing in the church. |
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MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev has fired 20 prison officials, including Moscow’s top prison official and the head of the Butyrskaya jail, after an investigation into lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s death last month found that prison officials had neglected his medical problems. Magnitsky, 37, who represented William Browder’s Hermitage Capital in a high-profile fight with the Interior Ministry, died Nov.
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MOSCOW — Prosecutors investigating a Dec. 5 fire that killed at least 146 people in a Perm nightclub have added three more suspects to their case, including a local fire inspector who failed to close the nightclub during a visit nearly three years ago. |
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The city parliament will attempt to elect a new city ombudsman on Dec. 23, with four candidates having been put forward for the post. Governor Valentina Matviyenko has endorsed the candidacy of Alexei Kozyrev, head of the St. |
All photos from issue.
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Following the fire at the Khromaya Loshad (Lame Horse) nightclub in Perm which took over 140 lives and made international news headlines at the beginning of this month, restrictions have been imposed on the use of fireworks. Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu has issued a decree banning fireworks at large-scale public events until the relevant laws have been tightened up. St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko has supported Shoigu’s initiative and introduced a ban on the use of fireworks indoors and at large-scale events. Other regional authorities across the country are considering similar measures, according to the Emergency Situations Ministry. |
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FESTIVE FUNFAIR
Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times
A band of Father Frosts performs at the annual Christmas Fair on Ploshchad Ostrovskogo which opened on Monday, complete with seasonal toys, pancakes, souvenirs and an ice rink. |
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MOSCOW — A 32-year-old traffic police officer caught red-handed during an attempted rape last week has admitted to carrying out a series of sexual assaults in southern Moscow and has been positively identified by 12 victims, investigators said. The suspect, who is expected to be charged with multiple counts of rape and formally placed under arrest Monday, was arrested Thursday during a “planned operation,” Investigation Committee spokeswoman Marina Merkulova said Friday.
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During the first nine months of 2009, the total volume of loans issued to legal entities by banks in St. Petersburg fell by 2.3 percent to 723.4 billion rubles ($24.03 billion.) During the same period, the volume of deposits held by private customers at St. Petersburg’s banks rose by 14 percent to 483.7 billion rubles ($16.06 billion). Conditions for loans to corporate clients tightened up in the autumn of 2008, but in September of this year banks began to relax demands made on borrowers, said Pavel Lavrov, manager of the Petrokommerts Bank branch in St. Petersburg. Corporate clients can now borrow against stocks of goods and receive unsecured loans, Lavrov said. |
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 According to Ancor recruitment agency, it now takes twice as long for job seekers to find new employment as it did before the economic crisis. The agency interviewed more than 1,800 specialists at both Russian and foreign companies in September, and then compared the results with similar research carried out in 2007. |
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MOSCOW — Belarus will get Russian gas at a discount for a few more years, Belarussian First Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Semashko said Friday, as the countries negotiated terms for creating a common economic space. President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin — at a five-hour meeting with their Belarussian counterparts the previous day — agreed to push back to at least 2014 the deadline for Belarus to begin paying prices that would give Gazprom the same profit margins that it receives on its European Union exports, Semashko said. Under the current contract, state-controlled Gazprom was scheduled to charge those prices starting in 2011, when Russia had initially hoped to introduce domestic prices based on EU export prices. |
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 Popular budget airline Ryanair will begin flights from the Finnish town of Lappeenranta to Dusseldorf, Germany, on April 1 with fares as low as 5 euros, the Irish airline announced last week. |
 MOSCOW — Norilsk Nickel will double its investment program next year as it considers buying a pricey oil and gas tanker, company CEO Vladimir Strzhalkovsky said Wednesday. The metals giant will boost nickel production by at least 15,000 tons to 300,000 tons worldwide in 2010, while extraction at its Russian units will remain at the same level as this year, Strzhalkovsky said at a news briefing. “However, there will be a 5 percent decrease in copper production next year, following a 5 percent decrease this year,” he said. |
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 MOSCOW — The economy’s decline abated in the third quarter as companies began restocking inventories depleted during a record slump in the first half of the year, the State Statistics Service said Friday. |
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MOSCOW — Russia will deliver information on its customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan to the World Trade Organization next month, in a sign that Moscow may be doubling down on its proposal to enter the organization as part of the confederation. WTO members requested the information, and Russia will prepare the necessary documents and deliver them after the New Year’s holiday, said Maxim Medvedkov, director of the Economic Development Ministry’s department for WTO accession. |
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The first year of the crisis is coming to an end. 2009 was tough, though it brought a refreshing, if bracing wind of change, rather than a whirlwind of destruction. Every single industry experienced significant downsizing. Sectors such as real estate development, car manufacturing and metallurgy, which had flourished for almost a decade, have been particularly badly hit by the crash. |
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