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CNOOC interests in Russian oil group's assets
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-08 15:16 ASSET SALES
YUKOS had said it hoped to liquidate its international assets before the end
of 2006 and use them to clear its outstanding tax and creditor obligations.
In February, Russian officials said China had lent Russia $6 billion to help
the Kremlin renationalise YUKOS's main asset, million-barrel-per-day production
unit Yuganskneftegaz, after the embattled company was forced to sell
Yuganskneftegaz to state oil firm Rosneft in December 2004 to pay part of $27.5
billion in back taxes owed to the Russian government.
There have been subsequent reports that Chinese state oil firm CNPC was
interested in buying a stake in Yuganskneftegaz.
YUKOS founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky received an eight-year prison sentence in
a Siberian penal colony for fraud and tax evasion. But critics of Russia's
government said the tax bill was imposed on YUKOS in a move to destroy the
empire of the politically ambitious Khodorkovsky, and to regain control over the
strategic oil sector it lost in the chaotic privatisations of the mid-1990s.
YUKOS's foreign assets include Lithuanian refiner Mazeikiu Nafta and
Slovakian pipeline operator Transpetrol. YUKOS wants to sell its 53.7 percent
stake in Mazeikiu Nafta, the Baltic region's only refinery.
Analysts have said four parties, including BP's Russian unit, TNK-BP, placed
bids for the assets, and that a joint bid by LUKOIL and U.S. group
ConocoPhillips are frontrunners.
But on Nov. 26, Lithuania's Economy Minister Kestutis Dauksys told Lithuanian
state radio that the two Russian oil companies were off the list.
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