Gazprom logo is fixed above the closed door with the warning "No Exit".
Photo: Pavel Smertin
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Gazproms Hands Oil to Gazprom Neft
Gazprom has begun transferring its oil assets to a subsidiary, Gazprom Neft. The Russian gas monopoly announced yesterday signing a protocol on handing the right of operating Gazprom’s 15 fields in Siberia to Gazprom Neft. The new company is to gain access to an estimated 30 million metric tons of oil reserves, which is still not enough to break a downward trend in oil production.
Noyabrskneftegaz, Gazprom Neft’s main production subsidiary, said in a statement yesterday that the company is to develop Gazprom’s plots following an operations agreement. Gazprom and Gazprom Neft were unable to tell Kommersant yesterday when the deal would be struck. The agreement will cover an oil ring of 15 deposits in Siberia’s northern Yamal, Orenburg and Tomsk Regions.
After last year’s buy of Sibneft (renamed later to Gazprom Neft), Gazprom considered a number of schemes to managed the company – let it operate as a separate business or integrate it into the holding. Gazprom’s board endorsed a development strategy for the company’s oil business in May.
According to the plan, Gazprom Neft will retain its independence. It will extract oil in Gazprom’s fields, export crude and pay some $1 billion in annual dividends to the parent company. The subsidiary is expected to increase the annual oil production up to 60 million tons by 2011. Gazprom’s strategy of oil business development says that Gazprom Neft must engage all 650-million-ton oil reserves into the working. For the time being, Gazprom Neft’s total production (with 50-percent stake in Slavneft) came to 40.12 million tons in 2005, only 70,000 tons more than in 2004. Oil extraction of Gazprom Neft shrank last year as well, 3 percent down to 33.4 million tons.
Gazprom Neft and Gazprom were unable to name the amount of the oil reserves in the 15 fields.
Valery Nesterov of the Troika Dialog investment firm puts it at 30 million tones. “It will not save the company from a decline in extraction but will help to make it stable,” the expert said.
Denis Rebrov
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 18, 2006
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