On 5 December, the Russian state corporation RusHydro sold Armenia’s second most important hydroelectric complex to the Tashir Group of Russian-Armenian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, reported the Armenian Radio Free Europe. 

RusHydro agreed to sell 90% of the International Energy Corporation (IEC), which owns the Sevan-Hrazdan cascade of hydroelectric power plants, to the structures of the Tashir Group. The buyer will be the Hrazdan Energy Company (RazTES) which owns the largest thermal power plant in Armenia with an installed capacity of 1.11 GW. In a statement, RusHydro said that a Tashir subsidiary paid 173 million rubles ($2.7 million) and assumed $55 million in debt owed by the Sevan-Hrazdan Cascade to buy the loss-making facility. It said that the deal was approved by Armenian public utility regulators.

After the transaction is complete, the Russian state companies will own only one asset in Armenia’s energy sector—the 5th block of the Hrazdan TPP, which, together with the country's gas transmission network, is owned by Gazprom Armenia.  Aside from this, Rosatom is engaged in the modernization of the Armenian NPP, which is mainly carried out at the expense of a state loan provided by the Russian Federation.

According to the Moscow daily “Kommersant,” continuing heavy losses incurred by RusHydro’s Armenian subsidiary were the main reason for its sale. The company posted a net loss of $13 million in 2018 alone. 

The Sevan-Hrazdan Hydro Power Plant (HPP) Cascade is the largest hydropower generating facility in Armenia and supplies about 10% of the country’s electricity. The system was built between 1930 and 1962 and has a significant role in supporting the balance of the electric grid, and also provides more affordable energy than thermal power plants. The system consists of seven small to medium size run-of-the-river hydropower stations located along Hrazdan River and its tributaries between the Lake Sevan and Yerevan. The total installed capacity of the Sevan-Hrazdan Cascade is 560 megawatts (MW) and mean annual output is around 500 million kilowatt hours (kWt/h).

The International Energy Corporation (IEC) took ownership of the system in July of 2003 and obtained a license for electric power generation in September of 2003. The initial owner of IEC was Inter RAO Company, a Russian state-owned company. In 2010, HydroInvest (a subsidiary of RusHydro) acquired Inter RAO’s ownership in IEC and held the majority of shares. In 2003 the Government of Armenia gave Sevan-Hrazdan Cascade to Inter RAO Company for $25 million as partial payment toward $40 million debt that Armenia had to Russia from importing fuel for generating nuclear energy.

The Tashir Group is a Russian holding founded by Samvel Karapetyan. Tashir Group incorporates more than 200 companies working in various industries and employs over thirty thousand people and today, the Group has implemented projects in more than 25 regions of Russia and neighbouring countries. The primary focus of the Tashir Group enterprise is the development and management of commercial properties. 

With this overtaking, the foreign ownership in the Armenian energy sector has become even more diverse. In 2015, Armenia’s largest hydroelectric complex, the Vorotan Hydropower Cascade, was purchased by a U.S. company in a $250 million deal hailed by the U.S. government. And in July this year, a German-Italian consortium officially launched the construction of a new thermal power plant in Yerevan that will cost around $250 million.