Rotenberg plans to build large urea plant in Russian Far East - sources
MOSCOW. March 21 (Interfax) - Arkady Rotenberg, who purchased Rossosh Minudobreniya in the summer of last year, plans to build a large urea plant in the Russian Far East, several market sources told Interfax.
CJSC National Chemical Group, which according to one source belongs to Rotenberg, will act as the investor in the project. Rotenberg's partner in this business will be Ukrainian businessman Dmytro Firtash
National Chemical Group is considering two options for constructing the plant - in the Khabarovsk territory and in the Primorye territory, another source said. In order to build the plant in the Khabarovsk territory, the company has sought 2 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas from Gazprom , and for the two regions at once, two to three times more than that amount.
Based on the average standards for gas consumption, National Chemical Group can receive around 2.6 million tonnes of urea from 2 bcm of blue fuel. This will make the new Far Eastern plant the largest in all of Russia. At the moment, the first place belongs to Mineral and Chemical Company EuroChem (the group's total capacities for urea output come to 2.4 million tonnes, with EuroChem producing its product at the Nevinnomyssk Azot and Novomoskovsk Azot). As a whole, roughly 5-6 million tonnes of urea are produced in Russia.
On Wednesday, the representation of the Far East Federal District announced the signing of a trilateral memorandum of intentions to implement projects for developing gas chemicals production in the Far East. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and General Director of National Chemical Group Nikolai Sabitov signed the document.
"The sides reached agreement on intentions to coordinate their efforts to organize the design, financing, construction and commissioning of gas chemicals production facilities in the Far East," the district representation said in a statement.
Gazprom has expressed interest in providing gas chemicals production facilities with the necessary amounts of natural gas or its derivatives on a long-term basis, the statement said. However, it did not specify how much investment would be required to organize gas chemicals production in the Far East.
According to Interfax's SPARK database, National Chemical Group was registered in October of last year, and 100% of its shares belong to CJSC Russian Holding Company (RHC). RHC's main shareholder is Olpon Investment Limited.
According to the latest list of IBTC-Bank's affiliated entities (as of October 1, 2009, later in 2009 it was joined to SMP Bank, which belongs to the Rotenberg brothers), Rotenberg owns over 50% of Olpon Investment Limited. As of January 1, 2012, SMP Bank's list of affiliated entities indicated that Olpon Limited and RHC belong to SMP Bank's group of entities.
Sabitov, who currently heads RHC, is a representative of the management company NPV Engineering, which belongs to Rotenberg.