SME Times News Bureau | 31 Aug, 2019
Minister of Petroleum &
Natural Gas and Steel Dharmendra Pradhan visited Moscow from August 29-30, 2019
on the invitation of Minister of Energy of Russian Federation Alexander Novak.
During the visit, he held a
series of high-level bilateral engagements with Russian Government and private
sector entities from energy and steel sectors.
The Minister was accompanied
by a 25-member strong business delegation comprising of CEOs of some of the
largest Indian oil & gas, steel and engineering consulting companies.
Coming a week before the visit
Narendra Modi to Vladivostok, it represented a powerful signal of India's
interest in energy and mineral collaboration with Russia.
The visit saw high level
meetings of Pradhan with Deputy Prime Minister of Russia and Presidential Envoy
to the Far Eastern Federal District Yuri Trutnev; Minister of Energy, Alexander
Novak, and Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade, in-charge of steel sector, Victor
Evtukhov.
In his interaction with Dy PM
Mr. Trutnev, Shri Pradhan conveyed that India was committed to strengthening
India’s engagement in energy and steel sector with the Russian Far East.
He presented the Indian
interest to increase energy cooperation with Russia and to become a long term
partner of the Russian coal sector.
The Deputy Prime Minister
invited the Indian side to consider various opportunities in the Far East in
the coking coal, transport and logistics sector.
The Indian Minister referred
to the vision of Hon’ble Prime Minister to deepen engagement of India with
Russian Far East and Arctic regions and emphasised that his Ministries of Oil
& Gas and Steel will work towards that direction.
He also stressed upon the need
of direct shipping routes between Russian Far East and Indian Eastern Coast.
The Indian Minister met with
the Russian Minister of Energy, Mr Alexander Novak. The two sides reviewed the
current status of cooperation and identified various opportunities in which to
their engagement can be increased.
Their discussions covered a
myriad of issues like mutual investment in each other’s countries, developing
on robust energy relationships, protection of both energy producers and
consumers etc. After the meeting of the two Ministers, the discussion was
opened to oil and gas companies of both countries from public and private sectors.
The two Ministers stated their
support for increasing energy relations and welcomed the initiatives of the
companies which have resulted in the energy sector becoming one of the
important pillars of India-Russia relations.
During the visit of the Sh
Pradhan, a special session was organized for the Indian delegation to discuss
specific projects of immediate interest to Indian companies.
The session which was
organised with the support of Russia’s Far East Investment and Export Agency
was attended by around 40 representatives from top Russian companies.
This platform provided an
opportunity for high-level interaction between the Indian and Russian
companies.
During the event presentations
were made on specific opportunities for Indian companies in the oil, gas and
coking coal and steel sectors–in both greenfield and brownfield investments.
Companies on both sides held separate B2B follow-up meetings to concretize the
ideas discussed in the expanded session.
The CEO of the Far East
Agency, Mr. Leonid Petukhov assured the participating Indian companies of
support in building contacts on both sides and governmental support to
Indian projects.
Pradhan urged participants on
both sides to come up with tangible outcomes as a result of their interactions
during this visit, to further bolster India-Russia partnership.
He emphasized the importance
the leaders of the two countries have placed on strengthening mutual bilateral
trade and investment in the sectors under discussion.
In addition, the delegation
met with senior leadership of some of the biggest oil, gas, coal and steel
companies and discussed ways and means to further strengthen collaboration in
the near future.
These included CEOs and senior
leadership of companies like Rosneft, Novatek, Evraz, Kolmar, VostokUgol,
Dolguchan, Tiger Realm, etc.
Pradhan and the delegation
also visited the Innovation Centre and Moscow Business School in Skolkovo.
The head of Skolkovo
foundation Arkady Dvorkovich, presented the opportunities to Indian companies
and welcomed their participation in the Skolkovo platform.
The Skolkovo Innovation centre
which has more than 2000 start ups has the potential to integrate Indian and
Russian products into the global value chain.
Various Russian companies
which had interest in cooperation with Indian companies presented various
opportunities for collaboration in sectors ranging from oil and gas to Digital
economy to robotics etc.