Rosatom and Siemens launch strategic partnership
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin held a meeting with Siemens AG President Peter Löscher,and President of the state corporation Rosatom Sergei Kiriyenko at the White House yesterday. The meeting sent an important signal to the world nuclear industry. The Prime Minister said that Rosatom and Siemens were ready for a full-scale strategic partnership in the nuclear energy field. The fact that the announcement was first made by Mr Putin and not by the immediate parties involved, shows that the decision has high-level support. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to express her position on the issue at a meeting between the German energy agency and Russia's Mosenergo in Berlin today. "We are ready to pass on from one-off projects to forging a full-scale partnership between Siemens and the Russian Rosatom. We could work actively both in Russia and in Germany, as well as in the markets of third countries," Mr Putin said.
A source at Rosatom said the form of the new partnership is not yet known. Perhaps it will be a joint venture. If that happens, the Rosatom-Siemens partnership will be the biggest player in the world nuclear energy field capable of the whole spectrum of operations from the production of nuclear fuel to the running of nuclear plants.
A week ago Siemens withdrew from the JV with the French Areva, a rival of Rosatom. It happened because the French Government did not let Siemens to buy into Areva's parent company. Rosatom's two other rivals are the American Westinghouse, in which the Japanese Toshiba has a stake, and a consortium of the American GE and the Japanese Hitachi.
Vladimir Putin and Peter Löscher exchanged pleasantries recently. The former stressed that it was the first time in its history that Siemens was holding an enlarged meeting of its board outside Germany and what was more, was holding it in Moscow. Vladimir Putin promised to "offer every kind of assistance in implementing projects". Peter Löscher said that the Russian Prime Minister had honoured Siemens by allowing it to cooperate in such a sensitive area as nuclear energy.
Sergei Kiriyenko struck a pragmatic note: Beginning from today a task force would be created to work out the principles of a full-scale strategic partnership. "An opportunity is presenting itself to think and to see how strategic partnership could be formed in the context of a nuclear renaissance," Mr Kiriyenko said. He explained that at present the companies have some individual projects, for example, the building of the Belene power plant in Bulgaria.
In addition to an agreement with Rosatom, Siemens President Peter Löscher will come away from Russia with several more major contracts. Siemens will take part in the project to enhance energy efficiency in Yekaterinburg. An agreement to the effect was signed by Minenergo, the administration of Sverdlovsk Region and the German Energy Agency. Siemens AG, together with Russian and German partners, will monitor and analyse energy efficiency in the city of more than a million people and develop an energy saving programme. Siemens also signed a memorandum of intent with Inter RAO on servicing thermal power plant turbines. The German concern also signed a memorandum on cooperation with the Russian gas giant Gazprom in the maintenance of eight gas turbines at two power plants, Mosenergo and OGK-2. The companies are also planning several projects in the production of liquefied natural gas and creating a service infrastructure for energy projects. Working groups will start discussing the issue shortly, Gazprom has announced.
Andrei Biryukov, Yekaterina Gavshina
