Jobs for the boys: Biden's son signs for Ukraine gas giant

Published on May 14, 2014

A son of the US Vice-President has joined the board of directors of Ukraine's largest private gas producer. Hunter Biden now leads the company's legal unit - getting the position a few weeks after his father's trip to Kiev. And, as Marina Portnaya explains, this could be more than just a coincidence

https://www.rt.com/business/158660-biden-son-ukraine-company/

13 May, 2014

Hunter Biden, son of US VP Joe Biden, is joining the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s largest private gas producer. The group has prospects in eastern Ukraine where civil war is threatened following the coup in Kiev.

Biden will advise on “transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion and other priorities” to “contribute to the economy and benefit the people of Ukraine.”

Joe Biden’s senior campaign adviser in 2004, financier Devon Archer, a business partner of Hunter Biden’s, also joined the Bursima board claiming it was like ‘Exxon in the old days’.

Biden Jr.’s resume is unsurprisingly sprinkled with Ivy-league dust – a graduate of Yale Law School he serves on the Chairman’s Advisory Board for the National Democratic Institute, is a director for the Center for National Policy and the US Global Leadership Coalition which comprises 400 American businesses, NGOs, senior national security and foreign policy experts.

Former US President Bill Clinton appointed him as Executive Director of E-Commerce Policy and he was honorary co-chair of the 2008 Obama-Biden Inaugural Committee.

Burisma Holdings was set up in 2002. Its licenses cover Ukraine’s three key hydrocarbon basins, including Dnieper-Donets (in eastern Ukraine), Carpathian (western) and Azov-Kuban (southern Ukraine).

The Biden board news came as Gazprom moved Ukraine to a prepaid gas delivery regime and sent Naftogaz, Ukraine’s gas champion, a $1.66 billion bill that is due June 2, or Moscow will halt supplies.

Ukraine currently has about 9 billion cubic meters of gas in storage, but by the winter needs 18.5bcm. Kiev bought 27.7 billion cubic meters from Gazprom for which it still owes some $3.5 bn in 2013.

Gazprom is demanding Kiev pays $485 per 1,000 cubic meters, raised from $268.50 after Moscow was forced to cancel several discounts agreed upon under Yanukovich's tenure as president. Kiev rejects the new price as “politically motivated” and says it will only pay its debt if Gazprom lowers the price back to $268.50, or else open an arbitration case

against the company in Stockholm.

https://www.nknews.org/2014/03/china-cuts-power-to-north-korean-island/

Neighbouring China switches off electricity supply to North Korea's Bidan Island

Kang Tae-jun

March 17th, 2014

China has stopped providing electricity to North Korea’s Bidan Island, the Washington based Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on March 14.

Bidan is a river island located in the Shindo-gun area of the North Pyongan province. Along with nearby Hwanggumpyong Island, it is one of the few places in the DPRK where citizens have 24-hour access to the electricity

However, an unnamed source living in North Korea told RFA that Bidan Island no longer has access to the Chinese electricity, and that no one knows when and why it stopped.

Another source told RFA that China is not providing the electricity to North Korea for free, and there might be a dispute between the two countries over bill payments.

“In a narrowly stove-piped economic structure like North Korea’s, problems at the top may lead to stasis and paralysis lower down,” Chris Green, Daily NK international editor told NK News.

He added that shifting economic sands in Pyongyang might be having an impact on bilateral trade dealings.

“However, it is too early to say that this story, if it is true, signifies friction between the two sides,” Green continued.

The electricity supply to the Bidan and Hwanggumpyong Islands is generated by the Jinshan thermoelectric power plant in Dandong, near the Chinese – North Korean border.

Bidan has a large copper mine, which up until now had been using the electricity from the Chinese mainland to extract the valuable metal.