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Russia's top oil major extends energy empire
AFP
MOSCOW
Petroleumworld.com 06 27 07State-run oil major Rosneft, Russia's biggest producer, is to buy hundreds of petrol stations and oil production units that once belonged to Yukos, the firm said in a statement Tuesday.
The company will buy 495 petrol stations and oil production terminals in western and southern Russia for 468 million euros (629 million dollars) from Unitex, the statement said.
Unitex bought the facilities last month for 483 million dollars at an auction of assets belonging to Yukos, once Russia's top oil producer but now bankrupt following widespread investigations and fines for fraud.
Critics have seen the inquiries as a politically motivated drive to return Russian energy reserves into state hands and take down Yukos' politically ambitious chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is now in a Siberian jail.
Rosneft, which is chaired by the deputy head of the Kremlin administration, Igor Sechin, has been the main beneficiary of the Yukos bankruptcy sale, rising from second biggest oil producer to first in the past month.
On Tuesday, Rosneft said it had also agreed with Yukos's court-appointed bankruptcy administrator to buy more oil production facilities for 140.6 million euros.
These assets had been purchased at auction also last month by a group called PromRegionHolding but the sale was blocked by Russian authorities owing to anti-trust concerns.
Rosneft said the new purchases would enable the company "to become a leader in an attractive and growing market for oil product retail sales in Russia," helping the company control downstream as well as upstream markets.
Rosneft chief executive Sergei Bogdanchikov said earlier that the group was also in negotiation with a mysterious company called Prana, which bought offices and a trading company from Yukos for 3.9 billion dollars last month.
In 2004, Rosneft bought a key Yukos production facility, Yuganskneftegaz, at a fraction of its independently estimated value from Baikalfinansgrup, which had acquired the facility four days earlier at an auction.
AFP 260851 GMT 06 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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