YUKOS Assets Make Rosneft Industry Leader
Rosneft became Russia's largest oil producer after it bought the “Siberian” lot of YUKOS assets at auction yesterday. The state oil company paid $6.82 billion, that is, 5.5 percent over starting price, for the lot, which includes Tomskneft and the Angar Petrochemical Co. OOO Neft-Aktiv, a subsidiary of Rosneft, competed with OOO Yuniteks, a company with ownership unknown, for the lot. The director of Yuniteks, Alexander Basman, also heads companies registered at the same address as Gazprombank, but the bank denied that Yuniteks was acting in its interest. Gazprom had previously expressed interest in obtaining the lot. The final large lot of YUKOS property will go on the block on May 10.
The starting price for the lot was 166.34 billion rubles. That sum increased to 177.7 billion rubles in 36 bids, at which time Rosneft was declared the winner of the auction. In a press release issued on the outcome of the auction, Rosneft stated that its new assets would permit it to attain “a higher level of vertical integration.” It also became clear that Rosneft had surpassed LUKOIL as top producer with the greatest reserves in Russia. LUKOIL produced 90 million tins of oil in 2006, while Rosneft, with Tomskneft, can be expected to produce 92 million tons.
That situation may not last long. A source close to YUKOS told Kommersant that a discussion took place before the auction on transferring the production assets in the lot to Gazprom. Gazprom Neft is already active in the same region Tomskneft operates in. Two other sources confirmed those plans. One of them suggested that the transaction would be carried out through an exchange of assets, with Rosneft perhaps receiving the southern part of the Priobsk deposit, which is licensed to Gazprom Neft. Yuganskneftegaz, which is now a Rosneft property, holds the license to another part of the Priobsk deposit.
Sources say that Rosneft will not part with its new refinery. Rosneft has little refining capacity. Its ration of refining to production rises from 14 percent to 37 percent with the acquisition, according to Troika Dialog analyst Valery Nesterov, while that indicator is 60 percent for most Russian companies and sometimes over 200 percent for Western companies.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of May 04, 2007
|
