Oleg Deripaska would like to expand his energy business at the government's expense. On behalf of the company Rusal, he suggested to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that RusHydro be split up into four companies, one of which would be the Sayano-Shushenskaya Hydroelectric Power Plant which catered to Rusal's plants before the accident. Oleg Deripaska also wants to have a stake in it. Yet, restoring the station would cost 40 billion roubles, while Rusal has yet to complete the rescheduling of its own $16.8 billion debt and has practically curtailed all its investment programmes.
A source in the government's executive office told Kommersant that Oleg Deripaska, the owner of Rusal, wrote to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin last week stressing the need to change the structure of OAO RusHydro, which he considers economically inefficient. Rusal's owner wants to return to the days of RAO UES Russia, when RusHydro did not yet exist and there were plans to combine all the Russian hydroelectric power plants into four generating companies. RusHydro's main asset, the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP, which has not been operating since the August 17 accident, would become an independent company under that plan.
Another source familiar with the letter's content explained that Oleg Deripaska also wants Rusal, as the major customer of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP, to have a stake in its equity. A source close to Deripaska provided confirmation that such a letter had in fact been sent.
The press secretary of Basic Element, Sergei Babichenko, declined to comment on the matter. RusHydro said it knew nothing about the letter and refused to comment on the proposal to split up the company.
Deripaska first tried to buy into the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP back in 1999. At the time, there were plans to create a holding company with RAO UES, Sayany, that would include the power station and the Sayany Aluminium Plant (part of Rusal). But the then head of RAO UES, Anatoly Chubais, was not particularly impressed with the idea.
In 2004, RAO UES and Basic Element clashed over three Siberian hydroelectric power stations: Sayano-Shushenskaya, Krasnoyarsk and Boguchany. At that time, Basic Element advocated that the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP be reclaimed by the state and offered to complete the construction on the Boguchany HPP.
Currently, the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP belongs to the state-owned RusHydro, the Krasnoyarsk station is controlled by Basic Element, and the Boguchany HPP is part of the BEMO project, under which RusHydro and Rusal split the cost of completing the Boguchany Power Plant and the Boguchany Aluminium Plant.
The Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP's restoration calls for 40 billion roubles in investments, however. It is still unclear whether or not the state will earmark money for this purpose. RusHydro has repeatedly said that the station would be repaired using both its own and borrowed money, proceeds from the sale of electricity and capacity, loans, and the proposed additional issue of the company's shares.
According to Pavel Popikov, an analyst with FK Otkrytiye, the total value of the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP (including restoration) could be 76.8 billion roubles. Rusal is in no position to invest in the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP, as it still needs to restructure its own debts, and has currently only one investment project, Boguchany Energy Metals Project, or BEMO. The company is struggling to make timely payments even under that project.
The RusHydro Investment Programme for 2010 approved by the government is worth 80.6 billion roubles. Its capitalisation on MICEX stood at 299.64 billion roubles as of yesterday.
The accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP (installed capacity of 6,400 megawatts) occurred on August 17. Nine out of the ten turbines were completely destroyed and 75 people died. According to the Energy Ministry's estimates, restoring the station would take about 40 billion roubles and five years.
Rusal's total debt is $16.8 billion, $2.8 billion of which it owes to Mikhail Prokhorov, the owner of ONEXIM Group, $7.4 billion to international banks, $4.8 billion to VEB and $1.5 billion to other Russian banks. According to unofficial reports, Oleg Deripaska is $25 billion in the red.
Kommersant's sources in the government's executive office are skeptical about Deripaska's idea, although they admit that his latest attempt is "well-timed". "After the accident, the company's inefficiency may be a valid argument", Yekaterina Tripoten, an analyst with the investment company Sovlink, said. "But in reality, stand-alone hydroelectric power stations won't be much more profitable from a business point of view."
The analyst believes that a large hydro-energy company operates more reliably because the payback period of the projects is much longer than for heat power generation. She also noted that a decoupling would dramatically diminish the liquidity of shares. On MICEX yesterday, the shares of the Krasnoyarsk HPP were trading at $116 per kilowatt of installed capacity, whereas RusHydro was trading at $381 at the close of trading.
FINAM analyst Dmitry Terekhov added that a big company is better placed to borrow money, especially considering the fact that RusHydro doesn't have a heavy debt burden and could borrow capital much more easily than other companies. He also cited the recent trend of enlargement and consolidation of government assets as further reason to doubt that RusHydro will actually be split up.
Pyotr Grishkovets