By John Helmer, Moscow The armchair warriors in London and Washington love nothing so much as an excuse for an invasion against an enemy too small to put up much of a fight, or inflict too many casualties on the invaders. But that’s because the parlour fires, in front of which their armchairs are placed, […]

by John Helmer - Monday, February 28th, 2011
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Standard Bank is close to selling out its Russian bank interests, along with its 36.43% stake in Moscow-based Troika Dialog, to Sberbank, the Russian state savings institution and dominant retail bank in the country.

by John Helmer - Friday, February 4th, 2011
No Comments »

From John Helmer, Moscow LUKoil, the second largest of Russia’s oil producers and exporters, may spend $900 million over the next two years drilling up to 11 offshore probes for oil in the west Atlantic off Ghana and Ivory Coast, a LUKoil source told Business Day yesterday. The number of wells has diminished since LUKoil […]

by John Helmer - Thursday, December 2nd, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Gazprom, Russia’s largest company and the world’s leading exporter of natural gas, says it will delay all investment spending in Nigeria at least until next year’s Nigerian presidential election result is decided, and new legislation enacted to secure foreign investment in Nigeria’s oil and gas industry. The statement of Gazprom’s nervousness […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer, Moscow Nord Gold, the Russian mining company owned by Alexei Mordashov, has run into a grave new legal challenge to one of its most valuable gold-mining operations in the West African Republic of Guinea. The bad news comes after the unexplained failure of Mordashov’s company to confirm that it has been approved […]

by John Helmer - Friday, November 12th, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer in Moscow How much gold should potential investors in Alexei Mordashov’s gold-mining venture, now named NordGold, think they are buying into?

by John Helmer - Tuesday, October 12th, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer in Moscow Sacre-Coeur Minerals (SCM) is a small Toronto-listed goldminer prospecting the malarial swamps of Guyana (South America), so far without striking El Dorado. The company is so small, its website doesn’t publish financial reports. But the required filings with the stock exchange indicate that it is producing no gold; its operating […]

by John Helmer - Friday, September 24th, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer in Moscow The west African republic of Guinea has never before been so important to Russian mining companies – and to the even bigger internationals. So when Guinean voters go to the polls for the runoff round of their presidential election, much is at stake – and not only for our Russian […]

by John Helmer - Friday, September 17th, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer in Moscow An announcement last week by LUKoil’s number-2 executive and shareholder, Leonid Fedun (see image), that the Russian oil producer expects to find more crude oil in Africa than in Russia was intended to set off alarms bells at the Ministry of Finance in Moscow. That is where Fedun is negotiating […]

by John Helmer - Friday, September 10th, 2010
No Comments »

By John Helmer in Moscow In the last three months of 2009, according to the federal Ministry of Finance in Moscow, Russia exported about 250,000 carats of rough diamonds, produced by Alrosa, to the west African republic of Guinea. There is no known diamond cutting or polishing facility in Guinea, and Russia has never exported […]

by John Helmer - Friday, July 30th, 2010
No Comments »