Referring to Igor Artemyev, the Head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service, Interfax reported that Russia’s Government Commission on Monitoring Foreign Investments approved the purchase of Geotechnologies’ blocking stake by China’s company Jilin Horoc. Geotechnologies owns field deposits of nickel, copper, and cobalt on the Kamchatka Peninsula. According to the official, the Chinese are going to hold less that 25% of the Geotechnologies’ stocks. According to the company’s bylaw, the Chinese partner is going to enjoy the blocking minority’s possibilities. Igor Artemyev noted that nickel deposits estimated at 43,000 tonnes account for the bulk of Geotechnologies’ resources, cobalt deposits are estimated at 1,500 tonnes. Besides, Artemyev defined copper reserves belonging to the Russian company as considerable.
Currently, the non-ferrous metals are not being extracted on the field as Geotechnologies does not have investment opportunities.
Meanwhile, Russia’s government gave assent to another Chinese company to purchase more commodity assets. It is China’s National Petroleum Company (CNPC), a state-owned oil and gas corporation. Moscow agreed on the purchase of 20% stake of JSC Yamal, a liquid gas plant. The stake will be taken over by CNPC from Novatek. In early November, Novatek evaluated the 20% stake in Yamal LNG at RUB 24.3 billion.
Nowadays, China’s mineral companies have been vigorously acquiring external assets. In particular, CNPC is planning to purchase oil and gas fields in the neighborhood of Mozambique for $4 billion. In Russia, CNPC and its subsidiary PetroChina is showing interest in East Siberian deposits currently belonging to Gazprom and Rosneft.
