Nickel-money still available
The polluting melting plant in Nikel, Murmansk Oblast, will probably be shut down, and the Kola Mining Company says they will not need the 38 million EUR which Norway has granted for environmental improvements of the plant. Norwegian authorities however do not want to withdraw the money.
State Secretary Heidi Sørensen of the Norwegian Ministry of Environment says to Norwegian broadcaster NRK that the Norwegian Government wants to stand by their part of the agreement with Norilsk Nickel. Thus, the money can still be paid to the Russians when the environmental improvements of the plant are finished. If Norway stands by their part of the agreement, Sørensen thinks that this will make the Russians stand by their part of the agreement.
The Norilsk Nickel Company has changed the deficits of the 1990s into a multi billion dollar profit corporation. In 2007 the net profit of the company was 5,3 billion USD. General Director Jevgenii Potapov of the Kola Mining Comapany, operating the Norilsk Nickel mines in the Kola Peninsula, says that a possible reconstruction of the Nikel plant would cost several hundreds of million USD and that the Norwegian money has no impact on the project. -We don’t need this money any longer, Potapov said when visiting Kirkenes this week.
