Twitter

Norilsk Nickel

Lone Norwegian mayor accuses Russian oligarch of fouling the Arctic: When will Oslo follow? – by Anna Kireeva (Bellona.org – August 23, 2016)

http://bellona.org/

KIRKENES, Norway – Following a gathering of politicians and citizens in this town earlier this month, calls from its mayor to forbid travel to a Russian oligarch for his hand in polluting Northern Norway have intensified.

Norilsk Nickel, produces a third of the world’s nickel with facilities on the Kola Peninsula, which Norwegian and other scientists have said are responsible for extremely high concentrations of sulfur dioxide on their side of the border, something Rosprirodnadzor, Russia’s official government environmental watchdog has long denied.

But Rune Rafaelsen, mayor of Kirkenes told Bellona in an interview that he’s tired of watching as nothing is done to solve the 26-year-old crisis, and is appealing to Vidar Helgesen, Norway’s Minister of Climate and the Environment to hit Norilsk Nickel where it hurts.

Read more

Northern exposure: Life in Norilsk, Russia’s most polluted city – by Andrei Iskrov (Russia Beyond the Headlines – August 16, 2016)

https://rbth.com/

Almost completely shut off from the outside world, the city of Norilsk in northern Siberia is a surreal place dominated by the world’s largest nickel plant. Pollution from the enterprise and the harsh climate make life hard for those who work here, but there is also a pride in surviving in such an inhospitable environment.

In the northern part of Siberia’s vast Krasnoyarsk Territory, not far from the Arctic Ocean, lies the city of Norilsk. It is often referred to using superlatives – the northernmost city in the world with more than 100,000 inhabitants, the most polluted city in Russia, one of the coldest cities in the world, and the home of the world’s most northern railway.

Snowdrifts on the streets of Norilsk may not melt until the following winter, the numbers on buildings are two meters big so that they can be seen during a blizzard and real summer here usually lasts for only one week. Temperatures in the city frequently drop to -50 degrees Celsius (-58 degrees Fahrenheit) and below in winter.

Read more

The Kola Mining and Metallurgy Combine: Norwegian politicians and citizens call Norilsk Nickel ‘dirtiest industry in the Arctic’ – by Anna Kireeva (Bellona.org – August 11, 2016)

http://bellona.org/

KIRKENES, Norway – Residents of this Norwegian-Russian border town have long suffered enormous sulfur dioxide emissions from Russian industry, and say they’re fed up with weak reactions from their own politicians to the two-decade old problem.

An area event last week gathered hundreds of residents of the small town in highlighting their worries over the heavy metal emissions wafting in from the Russian Kola Peninsula’s Kola Mining and Metallurgy Company’s industrial complex towns, and requested their own local politicians break deadlocked talks between Oslo and Moscow to improve the situation.

The Kola company is spread out across Northwest Russia in three of the dirtiest industrial towns in the country: Nikel, Zapolyarny and Monchegorsk. The Kirkenes event highlighted the recent publication of a Norwegian-authored book entitled Stop the Soviet Death Clouds, the name of the eponymous movement that was sparked in the early 1990s to fight trans-border pollution from the newly disbanded Soviet Union.

Read more

Op-Docs: My Beautiful, Deadly City – by Victoria Fiore (New York Times – August 9, 2016)

http://www.nytimes.com/

Not many people have heard of Norilsk, an industrial cityin an isolated part of Arctic Russia. No roads or trains lead there; internet is severely limited; and it is it closed to foreigners.

Getting there, I would find out, is very difficult. Yet despite its obscurity, Norilsk has one of the largest mining and metallurgical complexes in the world and produces most of the earth’s palladium, an essential mineral in electronics and automobiles. Most of us probably have a bit of Norilsk in our pockets, bags or homes.

Having this connection to such an alien place intrigued me; Norilsk was the most important city I’d never heard of.

Read more

China’s nickel imports still flattering to deceive – by Andy Home (Reuters U.S. – May 25, 2016)

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON – China is importing more nickel than ever before. Headline imports of refined metal hit a new all-time record high of 49,012 tonnes in April. The cumulative tally of 157,600 tonnes over the first four months of the year represents a 115,000-tonne increase over the same period of last year.

Imports of ferronickel have also surged to 294,700 tonnes so far this year, which is already more than any previous calendar year with the exception of 2015.

Somewhere in this flow of material lies an unfolding bull narrative, one of falling Chinese production and resurgent demand. The problem is that there is too much else going on in the import data to get a good view of the shifting Chinese nickel landscape.

Read more

Norilsk Sees Nickel in Cars Tripling as Tesla Drives Sales – by Yuliya Fedorinova and Andrey Lemeshko (Bloomberg News – April 14, 2015)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

Nickel demand from the auto industry is set to rise as much as threefold in five years as output of electric and hybrid cars gathers pace, according to Russia’s largest producer of the metal.

“Hybrid and electric cars make more demand for nickel,” Anton Berlin, head of strategic marketing at OAO GMK Norilsk Nickel, said in an interview in Moscow. “It will rise because many automobile companies, such as Tesla Motors, have very ambitious plans for the future.”

Electric and hybrid vehicles are increasingly becoming a low-cost alternative for consumers as their batteries — which use nickel — get cheaper and more efficient. That may aid a recovery in the market for the metal after prices slumped because of oversupply in the stainless-steel industry.

Read more

Top Palladium Miner Rebuffs Risk of Tesla Electric Car Boom – by Yuliya Fedorinova (Bloomberg News – May 16, 2016)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

The rise of Tesla Motors Inc.’s electric cars won’t be enough to change the market for conventional vehicles or dent demand for the precious metals used to filter exhaust fumes, according to GMK Norilsk Nickel PJSC.

The lack of infrastructure to charge them and the pressure on power grids means that in the long term, the vehicles may comprise just 15 percent of the total auto market, according to Anton Berlin, head of analysis and market development for Norilsk. In the next five years, the market’s size will be limited to about 2 percent.

Norilsk is the world’s biggest producer of palladium, which are used along with platinum in catalytic converters that reduce car pollution. While the company would lose some business if electric cars, which don’t produce toxic emissions, becomes a significant part of the auto industry, it would benefit from more demand for nickel, which is used in the batteries.

Read more

Norilsk calls for nickel production to be reduced – by Henry Sanderson (Financial Times – March 13, 2016)

http://www.ft.com/

London – The world’s biggest nickel producer, Norilsk Nickel, has warned that prices for the metal are unlikely to rise unless lossmaking producers start to shut mines and close production.

Up to a quarter of global nickel producing capacity needs to shut, Pavel Fedorov, vice-president of the company, said in an interview.

“If other producers are rational we shall see a market readjustment — but if other producers don’t behave rationally then prices will remain low until rational behaviour returns to the market,” he said.

Read more

Norilsk to meet investors amid hopes of Russian reopening – by Michael Turner (Reuters U.S. – May 14, 2014)

http://www.reuters.com/

LONDON, May 14 (IFR) – Norilsk Nickel is meeting bond and equity investors in London on Monday, as market participants grow increasingly optimistic that some Russian borrowers might melt through the international fundraising freeze before 2016.

The Russian palladium and nickel firm, rated BBB-/BBB-, is not marketing a specific bond at the meetings, according to two of the sources, but giving fund managers an update. Barclays is arranging the meetings.

“My personal view is that they do not need to raise funds,” said an investor from a Swiss firm who has been invited to the event.

Still, Norilsk Nickel is a potential issuer as the firm has not been sanctioned by the West. Bankers say that investors are showing more interest in potential Russian supply.

“We’ve had some reverse enquiry about Russian corporates,” said one banker. “We’re a way off the market properly reopening but we’re having more interesting conversations than six months ago.”

No Russian issuer has come to the international market since Gazprom sold a US$700m one-year note on November 5.

Read more

Norilsk, Russia — The inescapability of the company town on the tundra – by Mia Bennett (Cryopolitics.com – February 2015)

http://cryopolitics.com/

There are many ways of framing Arctic climate change.

On the one hand, countries in the south often see themselves as potential victims of the melting Greenland ice sheet and rising sea levels. On the other hand, in the north, Arctic residents often view themselves as the victims of massive levels of industrialization and urbanization in the south. Most of the world’s greenhouse gases emissions, after all, can be traced to the United States, China, Europe, and Russia.

These emissions are driving environmental changes like warming temperatures and ocean acidification, which are exacerbated in the north by the polar amplification effect. Arctic residents then wonder whether it is fair for them to have to pay, often with their traditions and livelihoods, for people in the south to enjoy all the creature comforts of modernity.

But it’s not so simple as that. The Arctic, too, has sooty, polluting cities, some of which have a higher carbon footprint than cities in the middle and southern latitudes. Several of these can be found in the Russian Arctic, which is more industrialized than any other Arctic country’s northern area.

Read more

CORRECTED-Weak rouble helps Russia’s Norilsk weather metals fall – CEO – by Polina Devitt (Reuters U.S. – January 23, 2015)

http://www.reuters.com/

NORILSK, Russia, Jan 23 (Reuters) – Falling metal prices are being more than offset by the rouble slide, allowing Russia’s Norilsk Nickel to maintain margins despite lower foreign currency earnings, its chief executive said.

CEO and co-owner Vladimir Potanin, Russia’s eighth richest man with a $12.6 billion fortune from the world’s largest nickel and palladium miner, said if metal prices remained at current levels, Norilsk’s 2015 foreign currency revenues would decline from a year earlier to $10 billion.

But he said lower metal prices would not affect the company’s earnings before interest, tax and depreciation (EBITDA) margin, which would exceed 40 percent this year. He did not provide data for 2014.

Many Russian companies have been hit by a downturn in the economy, suffering from weak oil prices and Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis, but exporters are enjoying the 50 percent drop in the rouble since the beginning of last year.

Potanin said more important for his core business, based 300 km (186 miles) inside the Arctic Circle where it is dark for more than a month in winter, were prices for the company’s main metal products.

Read more

Norilsk to sell African nickel stakes to Botswana’s BCL for $337 mln – by Silvia Antonioli (Reuters India – October 20, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

Oct 20 (Reuters) – Russia’s Norilsk Nickel , the world’s top nickel and palladium producer, said it had agreed to sell stakes in two African nickel mines for $337 million to BCL, a Botswana-based copper mining firm looking to expand.

Norilsk will transfer to BCL its 50 percent interest in the Nkomati nickel and chrome mine, in South Africa, and its 85 percent stake in the Tati Nickel Mining Company, in Botswana, the two companies said on Monday.

BCL will also assume all attributable outstanding debt and environmental and rehabilitation liabilities associated with the assets.

Norilsk embarked on a new strategy last year that includes pulling out of international assets that it has identified as non Tier-1 mining operations. Tier-1 is an industry designation for what are typically the biggest and lowest-cost mines.

“The sale of the African operations marks a major milestone in our commitment to deliver the new corporate strategy. The transaction is part of the management’s roadmap to release capital from non-core assets and will have a positive impact on the company’s return on invested capital”, Pavel Fedorov, Norilsk Nickel First Deputy CEO said in a statement.

Read more

Norilsk Sinks in Nickel Bear Market Wiping Out 46% Gain – by Halia Pavliva (Bloomberg News – October 8, 2014)

http://www.bloomberg.com/

OAO GMK Norilsk Nickel (NILSY), the best performer earlier this year among Russian shares traded in the U.S., sank to a six-month low on concern demand will weaken amid expectations for a slowdown in global economic growth.

American depositary receipts of the world’s largest nickel producer dropped 1.6 percent to $17.23 yesterday as the metal, used to prevent corrosion in stainless steel, slumped the most in two weeks. The stock has lost 20 percent since July, reversing a five-month rally that made it stand out as the benchmark Micex Index tumbled after President Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea in March.

Nickel entered a bear market last month amid a slowdown in China, the largest metals consumer, and as stockpiles ballooned to a record. The International Monetary Fund on Oct. 7 cut its forecast for global growth, sparking concern that demand will ebb. Norilsk skirted the selloff in Russian equities triggered by sanctions over the nation’s role in the Ukraine war, surging 46 percent to an almost three-year high in July after months of nickel shortages.

“The company, which wasn’t affected by the sanctions, is now reacting to investors’ concern over economic growth, particularly in China, because that signals less demand for the metal,” Sergey Donskoy, an analyst at Societe Generale SA in Moscow, said by phone yesterday.

Read more

Russian business fears return to isolation during ‘evil empire’ – by Elizabeth Piper and Timothy Heritage (Reuters U.K. – September 26, 2014)

http://uk.reuters.com/

(Reuters) – Russian businessmen are backing Vladimir Putin over Ukraine but fear the country is being forced down a path toward less democracy, more central control of the economy and isolation that recalls the Soviet “evil empire”.

Like many other business leaders, Vladimir Potanin, one of Russia’s richest men, says Western sanctions and attempts to force the president to change policy risk opening a rift between Moscow and the West that will be difficult to repair.

“What is happening now, namely the isolation of our country from contacts with Europe, America and several other countries, causes real regret,” Potanin, a metals magnate who built his empire soon after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, said in an interview at the Reuters Russia Investment summit.

“Because, in a sense, we are returning to the days when Soviet people were regarded as coming from ‘the evil empire’ and now people are starting to place this cloak on Russians’ shoulders again,” he said, using the phrase coined by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the Cold War.

There is broad agreement in business circles that the Western sanctions, imposed on Moscow over its policy on Ukraine, have had the opposite effect to the one intended. Instead of undermining Putin, the sanctions have – at least so far – united the business and political elite.

Read more

An embargo on Russia’s Norilsk Nickel would hurt West -French rival – by Gus Trompiz (Reuters India – July 30, 2014)

http://in.reuters.com/

PARIS, July 30 (Reuters) – An embargo against Norilsk Nickel as part of Western sanctions against Russia would hurt nickel users in Europe and the United States rather than Norilsk itself, the head of French mining group Eramet said.

Norilsk, the world’s largest producer of the stainless steel ingredient, has not been targeted so far by western measures aimed at punishing Russia for its support of pro-Moscow rebels in neighbouring Ukraine.

“Nobody expects sanctions against Russia and Norilsk would affect Norilsk’s production since it would sell to China if it couldn’t sell elsewhere,” Eramet Chief Executive Patrick Buffet said during a presentation of Eramet’s first-half results on Wednesday.

“It’s unlikely an embargo by Europe would materialise, because it would be shooting itself in the foot, since Norilsk could ship its production to Asia, creating a shortage in Europe and oversupply in Asia. The consequence would be a jump in physical premiums in Europe and a discount in Asia,” he added.

The most likely scenario for western restrictions against Norilsk would be a U.S.-only embargo, which would push up nickel premiums there but not hit the world market, Buffet added. Nickel prices have already rallied this year after a ban by Indonesia on nickel ore exports curbed supply to China.

Read more