RusEnergy

MOSCOW, October 25 (RIA Novosti commentator Peter Lavelle) - Industry and Energy Minister Viktor Khristenko is leading a delegation of Russian business leaders to the U.S. this week. Visiting the country for first time as minister, Khristenko's agenda includes broadening bilateral industrial relations and kick-starting the Russia-U.S. energy dialogue. Khristenko's high profile visit marks a significant improvement in the Russia-U.S. energy dialogue, which all but died after the start of the Yukos affair in 2003. Previously, Yukos had aggressively pushed for the construction of a million-barrel-a-day pipeline to an export terminal at Murmansk for later shipment to the American market. That project has been a dead letter for the past two and a half years, but Khristenko appears to have revived the idea. Recently he was quoted as saying that Russia would look to export crude from a Barents Sea port by 2009 and that this route could rise to around one million barrels a day. Members of the delegation include 12 company leaders, as well as the president of Rosneft and the vice chairman of Gazprom. Russia has concluded direct energy deals with almost all major energy-consuming countries except the US. Khristenko also told journalists that he expected Russia's oil output in 2005 to reach 478 million metric tons (an average of 9.6 million barrels a day), or up 4.2% on last year. This appears to be overly optimistic given that the most recent data for September shows an annual growth rate of little more than 2%.