Aiyar: Strategic energy alliance with Russia
Moscow: India is seeking a strategic energy alliance with Russia that would guarantee India's energy security and recast global energy equations.

According to the Petroleum Minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar, who was speaking to Indian mediapersons here after talks with top Russian energy officials and oil and gas majors, "What I am talking about [is] the strategic alliance with Russia in energy security, which is becoming for India at least as important as our national security."

During his four-day visit to Russia that ended today, Aiyar discussed proposals that would enable India to get direct access to Russia's booming oil and gas production and to join forces with Russia to form an Asian oil products market.

He announced an agreement on using Russian technology for large underground coal gasification (UCG). The technology, developed by Russia's Skochinsky Institute of Mining, will enable India to extract gas from its vast unminable coal reserves, which will compensate for the shortage of natural gas.

Aiyar also said that he discussed prospects for further collaboration in the Sakhalin-1 oil-and-gas project, and new joint energy ventures in Russia, India and Central Asia, as well as Indian involvement in the possible construction of a Sakhalin-Japan gas pipeline and a Russian oil pipeline from Eastern Siberia to Nakhodka. "With pipeline systems becoming more sophisticated, we can for the first time gain direct access to Russian oil and actually pick it up from Nakhodka," Aiyar said.

Aiyar also offered India's help to build a seabed oil pipeline in the Black Sea parallel to the existing Bluestream gas pipe from Russia to Turkey. The underwater oil pipe would take Caspian oil to the Mediterranean and further on to the Red Sea, where India will pick it up.

The ideas that Mr. Aiyar discussed in Moscow are part of his plan to promote a "really effective Asian oil product market," that would unite Russia and West Asian oil suppliers, on one hand, and principal Asian buyers - Japan, China and India, on the other. The proposal will be discussed at a meeting of Asian oil exporters and importers scheduled for January 19, 2005.
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Infrastructure growth up at 5.9 percent for September
New Delhi: The official six-industry infrastructure index has registered a 5.7 per cent year-on-year growth during April-September this year, as against 5.4 per cent during the corresponding first half of 2003-04.

The higher growth rate has been led mainly by the energy sector. The sector has shown growth rates during April-September 2004 of 4.2 per cent in crude petroleum (against minus 1.5 per cent during April-September 2003), 7.4 per cent in refined petroproducts (6.1 per cent), 6.6 per cent in coal (4.1 per cent) and 7.8 per cent in electricity (3 per cent).

But on the other hand, there has been a slowdown in cement and finished steel, which have registered lower first-half growth rates of 4.8 per cent (5.6 per cent) and 3 per cent (11.9 per cent).

During September, the overall index grew year-on-year by 5.9 per cent, against 7.9 per cent in the same month last year.
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