GROZNY, Russia: The leader of Russia's Chechnya region has asked the United Arab Emirates to invest more than $2 billion in the energy and industrial sectors of the Muslim province. "I'd like to stress that our relations with the UAE are brotherly," Chechnya's Kremlin-backed leader Ramzan Kadyrov told a visiting delegation late Tuesday. "Economic, sport and cultural ties link us." Kadyrov proposed 17 investment projects for the region of just over 1 million people, totaling 68.89 billion rubles ($2.35 billion), his press service said. It said the bulk of investments would go toward hydropower plants. The Kremlin credits Kadyrov with maintaining a shaky peace in Chechnya. Abu Dhabi, keen to diversify its economy away from a reliance on oil, has been an active investor overseas. The emirate is the largest and wealthiest in the UAE. "We have already chosen some projects that interest us and should be carried out. I think we will see success," UAE delegation member Mahmood Al-Mahmood said. He gave no details. The Kremlin has poured money into the North Caucasus, where unemployment in some areas exceeds 50 percent. Moscow has budgeted 152 billion rubles for Chechnya from 2008-2012. Fahim Al Qasimi, who heads the UAE's economic and international relations department, told Kadyrov his country "has a huge wish and interest in developing relations with Chechnya". Flights out of the Chechen capital Grozny to Dubai, its first international commercial flights, will start in two or three months, Ziyad Sabsabi, who represents Chechnya in Russia's upper house of parliament, said. Separately, Russia's energy giant Gazprom may decide to delay the launch of its troubled Shtokman gas field by two more years because of the United States' rapid development of shale gas, a report said Thursday. The Barents Sea project has experienced repeated delays caused by the 2008 global financial crisis and the subsequent development of shale gas in the United States, Canada and other Western countries. Originally due to go online in 2013, the field might now be only commissioned in 2018, Pyotr Sadovnik, the deputy head of Russia's subsoil usage agency, was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti. “There are questions being asked about delaying it until 2018, but there has been no final decision,” said Sadovnik. The Russian gas monopoly last year officially delayed the start of Shtokman gas production until 2016, with the date of liquefied natural gas (LNG) production pushed back until 2017.
