Translated material
Northgas is not the last
Gazprom found “new” lost assets
Obtaining a 51% stake in Northgas, as it turned out, is not the last project of Gazprom management as part of the campaign to return lost assets. “About the return of assets. I can say that they (assets that need to be returned. - Ed. ) exist. We are working on this now. What belonged to Gazprom must be returned. As they say, “my daughter” left, took a walk, and be kind enough to return home,” said Gazprom Deputy Chairman of the Board Alexander Ananenkov yesterday. When asked whether he means Northgas, in which the monopoly will restore its controlling stake in the very near future, or whether we are talking about some other enterprises, Mr. Ananenkov replied: “I wouldn’t like to say anything else. Read the press from 6-7 years ago, all the names (of the withdrawn assets - Ed. ) are known."A year ago, rumors were actively circulating in the market that Gazprom would, in one form or another, receive the remainder of the assets that were collected under the roof of Itera. The company still has a 49% stake in Purgaz (Gubkinskoye field with production of 14 billion cubic meters of gas per year) and 100% of Sibneftegaz (Beregovoye field, 11 billion cubic meters of production). Gazprom regained a controlling stake in the first one almost immediately after the start of the campaign to return assets and now shares the produced gas with Itera, and the monopolist refuses to connect the Beregovoye field to the main gas pipeline system. However, Mr. Ananenkov rejected the assumption that the concern wants to get this deposit. “We are not planning this,” he said. And later he hinted that we were not talking about Itera. “The returned companies are now working normally as part of Gazprom and are friends with the shareholders with whom they previously worked,” said the deputy chairman of the board of Gazprom.
Some NOVATEK subsidiaries could apply for the role of “returning asset”. But last year the management of this company was able to peacefully resolve the conflict with the monopoly by returning the license for the Zapadno-Tarkosalinskoye field to Gazprom in exchange for renouncing claims to the shares of Purneftegazgeologiya.
The last major gas producer in which Gazprom lost control at the turn of 1998-1999 is ZAO Rospan. Now 100% of the shares of this company are controlled by TNK-BP. Vremya Novostey's sources familiar with the situation claim that Mr. Ananenkov meant precisely this asset. Gazprom refused to confirm or deny this information.
The temptation to continue the return campaign from Gazprom is very great. Firstly, this campaign received the blessing of Vladimir Putin himself. Secondly, without special production and financial costs, several of Gazprom’s commercial problems can be solved at once. Indeed, in recent years, only through the return of assets has the concern been able to increase gas production and implement a program for the reproduction of the mineral resource base. This fact was confirmed yesterday by Mr. Ananenkov.
Rospan International was created by Gazprom in 1992, around the same time as other joint ventures to attract private investment in gas production. The company became the owner of licenses to develop the Achimov deposits of the Novo-Urengoyskoye and East Urengoyskoye fields with reserves of 950 billion cubic meters of gas and 180 million tons of gas condensate. Project gas production is 15 billion cubic meters per year. The concern's main partner in the project was the Itera group of companies, which in the second half of the 1990s was the stronghold of the Okologazprom business. At the same time, as in all other similar joint ventures, investments in Rospan began only after Gazprom left the shareholders.
In January 1999, a few days before the introduction of bankruptcy proceedings at Rospan, Gazprom sold 51% of the enterprise's shares to Itera structures for $284 and an obligation to pay off debts and invest $90 million. However, Itera failed maintain control over your next acquisition. TNK entered the fight for the “idling” but attractive asset, buying up most of Rospan’s creditor and 44% of its shares. In order to resist the oil subsidiary of Alfa Group, Itera began to look for a partner, and in fact, a buyer for its 56% stake in Rospan. This was YUKOS, which first received the shares of the gas company for management, and then bought them for $180 million. The two oil giants managed to agree on the terms of transferring operational management of the enterprise into the hands of the Tyumen residents, after which investment activity began at Rospan. Last year, at the height of tax persecution, YUKOS was forced to sell its share to TNK structures for $357 million. It is characteristic that during the anti-Yukos campaign, the notorious State Duma deputy Vladimir Yudin raised the topic of “illegal privatization of Rospan.” In one of the requests to the Prosecutor General’s Office, the people’s representative indicated that the enterprise was artificially brought to bankruptcy and sold for next to nothing, and now there are “all legal and political grounds” for its return to Gazprom.
Then Gazprom officially declared that it had no intentions regarding Rospan, and the matter did not develop. However, the situation may have changed since then. Moreover, the attitude towards TNK-BP on the part of the authorities has become noticeably colder compared to the time when the shareholders of the two companies received the go-ahead for the merger (Vladimir Putin and British Prime Minister Tony Blair blessed the deal in the summer of 2003). Now TNK-BP shareholders are using every opportunity to demonstrate to the market confidence in their future.
On the other hand, it is almost impossible to find legal grounds for seizing a controlling stake in a gas enterprise from TNK. Moreover, in court cases, the British-Russian joint venture is a much more serious rival than Northgas, which has desperately resisted for two years. However, as the same litigation with Northgas shows, Gazprom’s administrative capabilities are now very high (no statute of limitations saved Farhad Akhmedov’s company from the threat of license revocation and forced it to make concessions to the monopoly). TNK-BP did not comment on the topic, noting that so far there have been no signals about the beginning of a new stage in the fight for Rospan.
By pure coincidence, one of the Russian owners of TNK-BP, who holds the post of director of the company’s gas projects, Viktor Vekselberg, came to negotiations yesterday with the head of Gazprom, Alexey Miller. According to Vremya Novostey, top managers did not talk about Rospan. The main topic of the meeting was a discussion of the prospects and problems of commissioning the Kovyktinskoye field. Mr. Vekselberg received the same answer as at the end of last week the head of BP, Lord Brown, to whom Mr. Miller proposed building gas chemical plants in order to ensure the sale of gas from this field.