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Russia's Rosneft takes stake from Yukos
By Amelie Herenstein
AFP
MOSCOW
Petroleumworld.com 03 28 07
Russian oil company Rosneft snapped up 9.44 percent of its own shares from stricken giant Yukos on Tuesday, paying a bargain 7.6 billion dollars (5.7 billion euros) for a package of assets at auction.
Bidding opened at a starting price of 7.47 billion dollars (5.6 billion euros) and within a few minutes the rival bidder, British joint venture TNK-BP, had backed out.
The package included promissory notes for the Yukos subsidiary Yuganskneftegaz with a nominal value of 136 million dollars.
"The sum obtained for the lot is absolutely suitable," a spokesman for Yukos' liquidator, Nikolai Lashkevich, said after the auction at Yukos' Moscow headquarters.
Rosneft made its bid via its subsidiary RN-Razvitie.
Analysts had fully expected Rosneft to win, saying the participation of TNK-BP, which is 50-percent by Britain's BP, was a gesture intended to dignify the controversial sale of the Yukos asset.
Analysts said the price Rosneft paid was well below the market value of the stake, which could now be sold on to a strategic investor.The auction marks the final chapter in the disintegration of Yukos, which became Russia's largest oil company under its now jailed former boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Yukos was dismembered in a series of court cases after Khodorkovsky was arrested at a Siberian airport in October 2003.
The company's fall cast a shadow over President Vladimir Putin's reputation abroad.
Critics in Russia and the West have said the Kremlin drove a politicized series of court cases to destroy Yukos, neutralise Khodorkovsky's political ambitions and restore company assets to state hands.
The former Yukos management, much of which has fled Russia, had argued against the bankruptcy proceedings, saying that the company was still solvent.
Khodorkovsky and other key figures involved in the company are serving prison terms, with the former chief executive serving eight years on embezzlement charges in Russia's Far Eastern province of Chita.State-controlled Rosneft, now the second-biggest Russian oil producer, bought Yukos' production unit Yuganskneftegaz in 2004 for billions of dollars less than the assessed value.
Moscow-based analyst Chris Weafer of Alfa-Bank said Rosneft had bought the latest stake at a one-billion-dollar discount to its market value.TNK-BP's participation should help it overcome problems it has had with Russian authorities over developing the Kovykta gas field in eastern Siberia, said Weafer.
Ahead of the auction BP chief executive John Browne held talks with Putin in the Kremlin on Friday and introduced the Russian leader to his designated successor Tony Hayward.
The auction "shows that despite all the headlines and criticism over the way the state has handled Yukos and Sakhalin-2, Russia has not become a pariah," said Weafer, referring to the state's recent puchase of a major stake in a project off the island of Sakhalin.
"These companies are all fairly keen to participate. For BP.... they want to extend their activities in Russia. They've obviously won major brownie points," Weafer said.
Rosneft is poised to take the lion's share of the Yukos assets to be sold off this year and has recently taken out a loan of 22 billion dollars for the purpose, analysts said.Other lots announced so far for a succession of auctions to be completed by August include 20 percent of the oil producing arm of Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, as well as stakes in power companies, banks and security outfits.
The sale of these assets could herald more bidders, with the likely involvement of foreign energy groups such as US oil major Chevron and a consortium of Italian energy groups ENI and Enel.A court-appointed bankruptcy administrator, Eduard Rebgun, earlier said remaining assets were worth 22 billion dollars. Yukos management and independent analysts say the real value is up to 40 billion dollars.
AFP 27 1204 GMT 03 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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