OREANDA-NEWS. UC RUSAL (SEHK: 486; Euronext: RUSAL/RUAL; Moscow Exchange: RUALR/RUALRS), the world’s largest aluminium producer, and the oil company Rosneft announce the signing of an agreement of intent to cooperate in the supply of petroleum coke and other products to RUSAL’s production facilities, as well as to develop Rosneft’s capacities for the production of petroleum coke with the participation of RUSAL.

The agreement establishes the intention of the parties to sign a number of long-term contracts for the supply of all the petroleum coke produced by Rosneft to RUSAL over the next 3-5 years. Currently, Rosneft is already a partner of RUSAL and supplies petroleum coke to certain aluminium smelters of the company. The agreement is aimed at expanding the existing cooperation.

To identify and develop new opportunities for cooperation, RUSAL and Rosneft will establish a joint parity working group to consider the terms of possible long-term contracts, as well as to assess the balance of production and consumption of petroleum coke in Russia until 2018, and to identify further areas of cooperation.

‘RUSAL being one of the largest consumers of petroleum coke in Russia is interested in the domestic development of deep oil processing. In the current environment of depressed aluminium prices and rising costs of raw materials, long-term contracts with such a reliable Russian supplier will ensure the strengthening of RUSAL’s resource security and provide a higher quality of supplies,’ commented Oleg Deripaska, UC RUSAL’s CEO.