MOSCOW, July 12 (RAPSI) - The Supreme Commercial Court has rejected an appeal by Rusal's Krasnoyarsk aluminum smelter on the rules of the wholesale energy market, a court representative told RAPSI on Friday.
The applicant requested the court to invalidate two paragraphs of the wholesale energy market regulations.
The regulations were approved by a government resolution on December 27, 2010 pursuant to the law on power generation and set out the operations rules for the wholesale energy market.
Rusal Krasnoyarsk said in its application that it had entered into a power sale and purchase agreement with the Krasnoyarskaya hydroelectric power plant on the wholesale market. But since the regulations provided for a markup of energy prices, the Krasnoyarsk smelter had to pay an extra 914,8 million rubles ($28.1 million at the current exchange rate) for the obligatory purchase of 1 MW of electricity in the first half of 2011.
The applicant claims that the provisions of the regulations do not correspond with the law on power generation and do not comply with the trade market access conditions set out in the law on competition.
The court ruled that the act in dispute was adopted by the Russian government within the limits of its authority and in keeping with the law on power generation.
Rusal is a leading global aluminum producer. It accounted for roughly 10% of the world's aluminum and alumina production in 2010.