Yanukovich for pragmatic stance on Gazprom-Naftogaz Ukrainy merger

.

KIEV, May 6 (Itar-Tass) -- Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich said
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's idea to merge Gazprom and Naftogaz
Ukrainy should be considered pragmatically, taking into account national
interests.
"How should we take the initiative put forward by the prime minister
of the Russian Federation? I think we should take it as one of the
possible options for cooperation with Russia on the gas issue. No, this
topic was not discussed before. It's an impromptu. And Ukraine will give
its answer after we have made all calculations from the point of view of
our national interests," Yanukovich said.
He stressed that the talks on this issue, if Ukraine decided to begin
them, should involve at a certain point the European Union as the main gas
consumer.
Putin suggested merging the two companies at a meeting with his
Ukrainian counterpart Nikolai Azarov last Friday, April 30. On Wednesday,
May 5, Azarov said Ukraine was ready for such merger "on equal terms".
"The prime minister of Russia, a country possessing enormous energy
resources, made such proposal at a news conference," Azarov recalled. "No
such proposal came at a working tete-a-tete meeting or at a committee
meeting. He might have been impressed by the scale of our cooperation and
generated this proposal," Azarov said, adding the proposal was "worthy of
attention".
"We will consider it, since it was made by the prime minister of a big
state, our neighbor with good intentions," he said.

.Russian oil tanker seized by pirates off Somalia tracked every 10
minutes.

MOSCOW, May 6 (Itar-Tass) -- The whereabouts of the Russian oil tanker
Moskovsky Universitet seized by pirates off Somalia are checked every ten
minutes through a satellite, a spokesperson for the company Novoship,
which owns the tanker, said.
It was reported earlier that the tanker seized on Wednesday morning
350 miles from Yemen was on its way to Somalia. The 23 Russian
crewmembers, including two women, and Captain Yuri Tulchinsky were taken
hostage.
Andrew Mwangura, the director of the Seafarers' Assistance Programme
for East Africa said the tanker might drop anchor off the coast of
Somalia, specifically in the area of the city of Garakad, overnight to
Thursday.
Russian prosecutors have opened a criminal case on charges of
organised piracy involving the use of violence and arms. The tanker,
flying the Liberian flag, was en route from Sudan to China with a
consignment of crude oil in its holds.
John Harbor, an EU representative responsible for combating piracy,
said the hijackers had made several attempts to grapple with the tanker
but the crew managed to escape from them every time. After yet another
attack, the crew contacted the EU forces to say they were okay.
However, the last radio session was conducted by one of the Somali
pirates who managed to get aboard the tanker somehow.
Harbor says there is always hope that the crew sealed itself off
somewhere on the ship although the EU mission could not either confirm or
disprove this.
Sources at the Main Staff of the Russian Navy told Itar-Tass that the
big antisubmarine ship Marshal Shaposhnikov was on its way to the area of
the incident.
In the meantime, a special committee was set up on Wednesday at the
mayoralty of Novorossisk, the major Russian port on the Black Sea where
the tanker's owner company is headquartered. In another move, the
authorities set up a committee for assistance to the families and
relatives.
"A special working group has compiled the full list of addresses and
telephone numbers of the crewmembers' relatives," Igor Dyachenko, First
Deputy Mayor of Novorossiisk said.
Novoship maintains constant contact with the crewmembers' families.
"The families of the crewmembers have been informed of the incident. As
soon as we get new information on the condition of the crew and the ship
we will make additional announcements," the company's spokeswoman Serafima
Shukshina told Itar-Tass.
A crisis hot line has been set up for the crewmembers' relatives in
Novorossiisk at (8617) 62-82-62.
Novoship has also set up a crisis management centre headed by Deputy
Director-General for Security Anatoly Chernikhovsky.
Novoship is one of Russia's largest shipping companies with fifteen
affiliations in the south of this country. The main company and its
subsidiaries mostly do the sea haulage of crude oil and oil products.
Novoship has 27 ships of the Aframax family of tankers /the ones with
the deadweight below 120,000 tons/ that are typically employed in
intra-regional trade. The demand for them has been growing in recent years
in the light of increasing export capacity of non-OPEC oil producers.
According to the International Maritime Bureau, 17 pirate attacks were
registered in the Gulf of Aden in the first quarter of this year, compared
to 41 in 2009. Pirates are holding 17 ships and more than 340 sailors from
different countries.
Last year, the pirates are believed to have been paid about 60 million
U.S. dollars in ransom for the seized ships.
-0-zak/