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Small Oil Companies Caught Poaching
The scandal over the reserves of Imperial Energy has found continuation in allegations by deputy chief of Rosprirodnadzor Oleg Mitvol against a number of British and Scandinavian companies that operate in Russia and trade on the London Stock Exchange. According to Mitvol, they have exaggerated their reserves by claiming others' deposits. Analysts note that inaccurate portrayal of an oil company's reserves in not a legal offense in Russia. Rosprirodnadzor, the Federal Natural Resources Use Supervision Service, will inform the LSE or British Financial Services Authority of its findings.
The companies in question are the British JXK Oil & Gas and Dana Petroleum. “We became interested in a company with capitalization of $2 billion that indicated on its website that it had reserves that belong to LUKOIL. When those soap bubbles begin to burst, the shareholders will think that they were cheated in Russia. We want to prevent that,” Mitvol said, referring to Dana Petroleum plc. He said that, on its website, , it indicates that it owns 80 percent in the operating company on the southeastern part of the Vatyeganskoe deposit. The license for the it belongs to LUKOIL subsidiary OOO LUKOIL-Western Siberia.
On the website of JKX Oil & Gas (), it is stated that Caspian Oil Development is developing the Inchke More deposit in the Caspian Sea. JKX owns a 30.5-percent stake in Caspian Oil development, and Rosneft owns 39.5 percent of it. The Ministry of Natural Resources withdrew Caspian Oil Development's license for that deposit in 2003, however. Kommersant was unable to find the information referred to by Rosprirodnadzor about the Inchke More deposit on the JXK website. Rosprirodnadzor also considers JKX's announced purchase of OOO Yuzhgazenergy of Adygea disputable. The company was to present a development plan for the Kosheganskoe deposit as a prerequisite for that acquisition, but failed to do so. The Kosheganskoe deposit was written off from Gazprom's reserves as unpromising, but increases JXK's reserves by 85 percent, which could potentially increase the company's capitalization by $300-400 million.
Rosprirodnadzor intends to check subsidiaries of TNK-BP Holding, Tatneft, the British Timan Oil & Gas, Urals Energy and the Swedish Lundin Petroleum AB as well. Stock prices yesterday fell 3 percent for JKX, 3.5 percent for Dana Petroleum and 4 percent for Imperial Energy.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of July 27, 2007
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