By John Helmer in Moscow

Israelis claim Russian identity to announce Angolan diamond mine venture.

That Russian mining companies have deep pockets and Kremlin clout is a handle that has been tried on South African gold bugs and the Canadian venture investor market with modest and shortlived effect. But it is unheard-of for a group of Israelis engaged in the telephone and internet business to portray themselves in Angola as Russian diamond-miners, especially when the leading Israeli diamantaire in Angola appears not to have heard of them either.

Notwithstanding, Tomer Peirce was welcomed when he stepped off his aircraft at Luanda airport recently; according to the Angolan News Agency, Peirce had gone to Angola for the Russian Diamonds Company. It was reported that he and his company are negotiating terms of participation in a new Angolan diamond venture called the Mualengue project.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, November 8th, 2007
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By John Helmer in Moscow

BlackRock pays bargain-basement price for Russian gold miner after IPO fails.

The controversial US equity fund manager BlackRock, part-owned by Merrill Lynch, has failed in a bid to keep secret two transactions in which the fund appears to have acquired 34% of the shares of a small Russian gold miner, GV Gold. This follows two failed bids by GV Gold itself to sell its shares to the market this year, through a London initial public offering (IPO).

According to the official notice on November 2 from the Russian government’s market regulator, BlackRock’s UK affiliate has bought 209,000 shares in GV Gold at $80 per share for $16.7 million. The sale-purchase transaction for 10% of GV Gold’s stock values the mining company at just $167 million. That is three times less than GV Gold’s controlling shareholders set as their IPO target in February, and again in May of this year, when their IPO proposal found no-one willing to buy at that price.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, November 7th, 2007
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By John Helmer in Moscow

German miner Chronimet and America’s Comsup Commodities reveal mystery of Armenia’s molybdenum mines.

Molybdenum is a metal that doesn’t lose its cool.

Used in a variety of alloys for steel, it remains rigid at 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and doesn’t melt until 4,730 degrees F, a point at which everything but four other natural elements have vaporized and disappeared.

The biggest source of demand for molybdenum alloys is in stainless steel production, and as this also consumes nickel, the price of molybdenum usually moves in parallel with nickel. If nickel and stainless steel prices are rising, so is molybdenum. When they decline, moly follows them down.

At least, that’s the theory.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, October 31st, 2007
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Kremlin insiders fall into disarray over ‘strategic’ mineral resources.

Only in Russian politics can it be true that a politician, who is commanding in the polls, may also lack the authority to rule. And only in Russia is the political solution for this to lock everyone up.

In 1925, Mikhail Zoshchenko, the comedian of Russian life after the Communist revolution, wrote a tale called “Nervous People”. On the surface, it was about nothing more than an argument in a communal kitchen over whose property a pot-scourer was. “Nerves are always shaken after a civil war”, the narrator starts off his recounting. Two women started the fight; two men, one a cripple, joined it. The one-legged man came off worst, floored by a saucepan to the skull. The militiaman called to scene was able to break up the fight by shouting: “Get the coffins ready, you bastards! I’m going to shoot!” The melee dispersed, except for the cripple on the floor. Zoshchenko reminds the Soviet reader what always happens. “The People’s Judge was a nervous sort of man, too: he booked everyone.”
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by John Helmer - Monday, October 29th, 2007
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Can outsiders like Rio Tinto see who commands, who follows, in Russian uranium sector planning?

It was Winston Churchill who once epitomized what he didn’t know of Russians, and what he didn’t like, by describing them as bulldogs fighting under a rug.

In the Russian uranium business, the rug has been pulled so tightly, it has proved difficult to count the dogs involved, let alone identify them by name or authority. It’s one reason why the South African government, plus major international uranium miners like BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, and Cameco, have found themselves in negotiations for uranium projects with the Russians — without being confident of who among them has the power to follow up their intentions, and implement their undertakings.

In the case of Rio Tinto, the problem appears to have been compounded by fierce internal divisions among Rio executives ambitious to make deals, but reluctant to share the limited intelligence they have with their own colleagues. Here it seems to have been a case of bulldogs on rugs barking at bulldogs under rugs.
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by John Helmer - Monday, October 29th, 2007
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By John Helmer in Moscow

At the Antwerp diamond conference Alrosa and De Beers switch positions on value of diamond beneficiation.

Diamond-miners are wolves; diamond-cutters are sheep.

At least that’s the way it has usually appeared to the governments of countries fortunate enough to supervise lucrative mineable diamond deposits. Expressed in terms of the diamond supply pipeline, the mark-up in value of diamond mine sales, compared to the costs of production at the minehead, can be a wolfish 500%. By contrast, the mark-up in value of the polished, which cutters realize in relation to the cost of the rough they buy, can be a sheepish 25%.
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by John Helmer - Thursday, October 25th, 2007
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Russian diamond manufacturers have reacted critically towards Alrosa chief executive, Sergei Vybornov, attacking key proposals he made at last week’s Antwerp Diamond Conference.

Vybornov ousted Alexander Nichiporuk from the top spot at Alrosa in February. But after a string of misstatements drew fire from domestic policymakers, he has limited his appearances, and declined requests for public interviews.

Last week, at the Antwerp Diamond Conference, Vybornov took aim at African governments for establishing domestic diamond cutting centres and local beneficiation to add profitability to diamond mining.
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by John Helmer - Wednesday, October 24th, 2007
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Litigators and analysts look for cash inside Russia’s global aluminium giant.

Most of the trouble Oleg Deripaska, controlling shareholder of United Company Rusal, has faced in the court claims confronting him in the past, and the one from Mikhail Chernoy (Michael Cherney) he currently faces in London, comes from the fact that Deripaska seems not to have the money, with which to meet his debts and obligations.

The claims of Cherney’s High Court lawsuit, including shares, dividends, proceeds from Rusal asset sales, and Rusal-funded transfers to Deripaska’s personal holding and other companies can be estimated at more than $5 billion. These claims are against Rusal, Deripaska, his Moscow holding Basic Element, and his worldwide assets.
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by John Helmer - Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
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By John Helmer in Moscow

Mystery American company takes concession to mine large antimony reserves in Tajikistan.

Antimony is one of the rare metals for whom new applications are being devised in electronics, battery manufacture, and flame retardants, but whose worldwide supply is fast running out.

That imbalance between supply and demand makes for highly volatile prices, and the behaviour of the Chinese, who control the world’s largest reserves and annual output, as well as the world’s largest demand, has driven the price cycle sharply up and down over the past decade. Antimony hit its previous price peak in 1995-96, at $5,000 per metric ton, or about $2.27 per pound. The price then collapsed by December 2001 to $1,000/tonne, 45 cents/lb. The revival of Chinese demand, outstripping domestic production, started the price moving upward since then. It reached $5,350/tonne, $2.43/lb, in July 2007. Industry projections for antimony indicate that it will strike $6,000/tonne, $2.73/lb, later this quarter, and remain at least as high for the next three years.
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by John Helmer - Monday, October 22nd, 2007
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By John Helmer in Moscow

De Beers’s arsenal resists Usmanov attack on the Grib pipe and the Arsenal pitch.

A public relations blitz under way this month in London and the UK media has produced charges and counter-charges involving Alisher Usmanov, an iron-ore and steel magnate. He is accused of conspiring with other Russians to defraud a De Beers-affiliated company of its 40% stake in, and several hundred millions of dollars in future profits from, the only major diamond deposit newly discovered in northwestern Russia.

Usmanov has had run-ins with the London press before. The first time, in 2003 and 2004, was when he started buying shares of the then Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus, and was rebuffed by the Corus board, which went on to sell itself to Tata of India. Usmanov found his champion at the time at the Financial Times. He also pocketed a substantial profit from the rise in the Corus share price.
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by John Helmer - Sunday, October 21st, 2007
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