The Mars oil platform, serviced by Shell in the United States
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Rosneft Forms Partnership with Shell
Rosneft president Sergey Bogdanchikov signed on Friday a strategic partnership agreement with CEO of the Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell Jeroen van der Veer on exploration, production, processing and sales of oil and petroleum products in Russia and abroad. Joint exploration and production will take place both on land and off shore. The companies say that no specific plans have been made yet, but several regions are being considered for their activities. Van der Veer told Kommersant in a June 8 interview that Shell did not want to build refineries in Russia, but was interested in production here.
Shell has an agreement with Gazprom on mutual interests, but their joint activities are limited to Sakhalin 2. Rosneft also plans to work on Sakhalin 2. In addition, Shell owns 50 percent of Salym Petroleum Development with Shalva Chigirinsky's Sibir Energy. Last year, that company produced 2 million tons of oil. It plans to increase production by 40 percent this year.
Analysts say that Shell wants most of all to replenish its reserves, which fell from 109 million tons to 55 million tons of petroleum equivalent when it gave up 25 percent of its share in Sakhalin 2 to Gazprom. Rosneft is looking for financial support and access to European refining facilities. Shell has shares in 20 refineries in Europe, including nine (in Denmark, Great Britain, France, Germany and Sweden) that it controls completely and four in Turkey that it owns 1 percent in.
Rosneft is striving for global status. It already works with BP, Total and Chinese and Korean companies. Access to European refining capacity will be important to Russian oil companies if they come into competition with Kazakh companies in the future. LUKOIL has been trying unsuccessfully to gain access to European refineries in recent years.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of July 10, 2007
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