US, Russia sign string of business deals

The signing at the Commerce Department highlighted the 10th session here of the US-Russian Commission on Economic and Technology Cooperation, chaired by US Vice President Al Gore and Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

“Our Commission should look for ways to empower our private sectors to become the sustaining engines of reform and growth in our societies,” Gore declared at a joint press conference with Chernomyrdin. “Governments must encourage and not stifle ingenuity,” he said. Chernomyrdin hailed the work of theCommission, established in 1993, as “the driving force” behind enhanced US-Russian cooperation.

A senior US official said the Conoco-Lukoil production-sharing agreement could be worth as much as 25 billion dollars over the next quarter of a century, as the two firms work together to extract oil and gas from the 450, 000-hectare (1.2-million -acre) Northern Territories area of Russia’s Timan-Pechora region.

Four smaller agreements, worth about 330 million dollars, were also signed Wednesday between US and Russian partners during a ceremony attended by US Commerce Secr etary William Daley and Russian counterpart Mikhail Fradkov. “These agreements are symbols of a strengthening relationship between Russia andthe United States,” Daley said.

A senior US official, speaking on background, later suggested that Wednesday’s agreements heralded several additional accords in the energy sector alone worth tens of billions of dollars.