B&M \ About Russia \ Metals

Metals

Russia occupies more than 75% of the territory of the former Soviet Union (FSU) and accordingly inherited a large percentage of its mineral resources. Russia is a large mineral producer, accounting for a large percentage of the FSU’s production of a range of mineral products, including aluminum, bauxite, cobalt, coal, diamonds, mica, natural gas, nickel, oil, platinum-group metals, tin and a host of other metals and industrial minerals. Russia had been significantly or entirely dependent on the output of other FSU countries for certain minerals, particularly metals from Central Asia, the Caucasus and Ukraine. For example, Russia had to import almost all of its needs for antimony metal, chromite, manganese, mercury and titanium and zirconium raw materials from other FSU countries. For other minerals such as alumina, copper, lead, molybdenum and zinc, a large percentage of the production had come from other former republics. The other republics, in turn, were significantly dependent on Russia for a large percentage of their minerals, and, in particular, oil and gas, for which Russian supplies were critical. While these interdependencies were often lessened by the sharp fall in domestic consumption of practically all mineral commodities following the breakup of the Soviet Union, they nevertheless remained crucial for a number of industries.

Russia is exporting much of its mineral output to world markets rather than to the FSU both owing to the fall in domestic consumption in the FSU and Russia’s need to earn hard currency. In cases where Russia was still exporting minerals to other FSU countries, it was at times incurring heavy debt from non-payment as was the case with natural gas shipments.

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