France signs contracts for €1bn direct investment to Russia

Russia and France have signed six contracts for direct investment into Russia worth about €1 billion as part of the ongoing business forum in St Petersburg and the coinciding visit of the French president.

The billion-euro ($1.17 billion) sum of the deal was reported on Tuesday by Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund. The six contracts were signed at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), which is being held in the former Russian capital on Tuesday and Friday.

For comparison, the entire foreign direct investment into Russia in 2017 amounted to $27.9 billion.

French Total acquires 10 percent of Russian Arctic gas project for $2.55bn

French oil and gas giant Total has signed a $25.5 billion agreement with Russia's Novatek on joining the Arctic Liquefied Natural Gas-2 project. Total will acquire a 10 percent stake in the enterprise, with the possibility of increasing it to 15 percent, Leonid Mikhelson, the CEO of Novatek, said, as cited by RIA-Novosti.

Russia’s atomic agency Rosatom and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission have signed a strategic paper on partnership in cooperation in the field of use of peaceful atomic energy.

Rosatom head Aleksey Likhachev has also teased a $1 billion Russian-French deal on the regeneration of used nuclear fuel, which may be signed during the ongoing St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).