Russia Signs Rosneft Deal With Qatar, Glencore
Source: Fortune
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This may be the largest privatization deal in Russian history.
Russian state holding company Rosneftegaz on Saturday signed a deal with the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and commodities trader Glencore to sell a 19.5% stake in state-owned oil major Rosneft, Rosneft said.
The privatization deal, which Rosneft Chief Executive Igor Sechin called the largest in Russia’s history, was announced by Rosneft in a meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday.
Its success suggests the lure of taking a share in one of the world’s biggest oil companies outweighs the risks associated with Western sanctions imposed on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine.
Rosneft had been under pressure to secure a sale of the 19.5% stake to help replenish state coffers, hit by an economic slowdown driven by weak oil prices and exacerbated by sanctions.
Read more: http://fortune.com/2016/12/10/twenty-first-century-fox-sky-bid/
$500 billion opportunity for Exxon, Russia in Trump cabinet pick
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Putin (R) meets with Qatar's Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Moscow, Jan. 18, 2016
On Jan. 18, Qatar Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani paid his first official visit to Russia, to meet with President Vladimir Putin. Since the Syrian war began, Russia and Qatar have been in opposing camps. Each perceives the other as a major spoiler in the conflict. Harsh rhetoric, often stylistically similar, sometimes flies both ways. Posted January 27, 2016
Before the new round of Geneva talks on Syria, now rescheduled for Jan. 29, Moscow continues to reconnoiter the ground of key regional and international players. In that regard, the talks with the emir were part of what came to be known in the Russian media as “the Middle East autumn.” Since September, Putin has hosted the presidents of Iran, Syria and Egypt; the prime ministers of Iraq and Israel; the Kuwaiti emir; the Saudi defense minister; the crown prince of Abu Dhabi; and — twice — the king of Jordan. At other venues, he has held negotiations with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and then Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud. This “Middle Eastern diplomacy marathon” — another euphemism savored by Russian journalists — was perceived as an indication of Russia’s serious interest in the region and its commitment to work with all regional stakeholders in the Syria crisis. Qatar was left out of this picture because of positions that Moscow and Doha found irreconcilable. In December, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov singled out disagreements with Qatar as “one of the major problems in the Syrian settlement process.”
Over the last quarter century, Russian-Qatari relations have been sluggish for the most part. Moscow deemed Qatar and Saudi Arabia to be fueling insurgency in the first Chechen war (1994-1996) and terrorist movements in the second one. The relationship went from bad to worse in 2004 after Russian security forces assassinated in Doha a prominent ideologist of Chechen separatists and in 2011 when Qatari airport security accosted Russia’s ambassador to Qatar when he refused to allow the diplomatic mail he carried from Moscow to be checked. The Arab Spring and the civil war in Syria drove the parties farther apart.
Therefore, the Jan. 18 meeting between the current leaders of Russia and Qatar was a much-anticipated event. The minor agenda of the talks was rather successful and resulted in bilateral agreements on two topics: visa-free travel for diplomatic passport holders and cultural cooperation. In turn, business experts were left with a task of creating a framework to boost economic cooperation that had failed miserably in recent years: In 2015, the trade between the two states was half the $55 million it amounted to a year earlier.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/01/russia-qatar-forced-compromise.html
What a tangled web they weave? or just business as usual.
