Date
Author
Николай ГОРЕЛОВ; Алексей ГРИВАЧ
Source
Preserved copy
Translated material
Marriage in Italian
ENI and Enel bought Yukos assets - a little for themselves, a lot for Gazprom
A consortium of Italian energy concerns - ENI and Enel - won yesterday the auction for the sale of Yukos gas assets, offering $5.83 billion. Moreover, just hours before the auction, the future winner signed a special agreement with Gazprom, which provides for subsequent resale to the Russian concern the main part of the purchased assets.As in the case of the auction on March 27, when the “granddaughter” of Rosneft bought the stake in the state-owned company that was on offer , yesterday everything went according to plan. Gazprom was supposed to become the buyer of Yukos's gas assets, and already about two months ago it became clear that the Italian corporations ENI and Enel would help it in this. And yesterday morning, even before the auction began, Gazprom announced that it had entered into an option agreement with the Italian consortium to buy out their assets if they won the auction. Half an hour later this victory took place.
Three large gas assets of YUKOS were put up for auction yesterday as a single lot - 100% of the shares of Arcticgas, Urengoil Inc. and Neftegaztekhnologiya, as well as 20% of the shares of Gazprom Neft, which YUKOS acquired in 2003 for 3 billion dollars from the structures of Roman Abramovich (at that time it was still Sibneft). In addition, a number of small assets and bills of exchange were included in the lot. The total reserves of producing enterprises (with the exception of Gazprom Neft) amount to 5 billion barrels of oil equivalent. The starting price was 144.776 billion rubles. ($5.57 billion), auction step - 260 million rubles. ENI and Enel put forward their Russian joint venture Enineftegaz LLC (the shares of Italian concerns are distributed at 60 and 40%, respectively) for the auction. According to the chairman of the commission, Yuri Savin, in addition to the future winner, three applications were submitted - Unitex LLC (an agreement to purchase this company was signed on the eve of the auction by NOVATEK), Nefttradegroup LLC (affiliated with Rosneft) and gas trader Trans Nafta CJSC " “Trans Nafta CJSC was not allowed to participate in the auction,” said Mr. Savin, “because this bidder did not arrive to register participants.”
As stated in the ENI press release, the agreement with the Russian gas monopolist involves the purchase of a 20% stake in Gazprom Neft for $3.7 billion, as well as an option to buy out at least 51% of the shares of Arcticgas, Urengoil Inc. and "Oil and Gas Technologies". So Gazprom will get what it wanted from YUKOS, without participating in the auction for fear of being sued by the shareholders of the disgraced company. Italian concerns have finally achieved access to gas production assets in Russia. Considering that Vladimir Putin visited Italy two weeks ago, and on the evening before the auction, the Russian president spoke on the phone with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi (they discussed “the progress in implementing the practical agreements reached during the recent visit in cultural, humanitarian, trade, economic and other areas cooperation,” the Kremlin said in a statement), the level of preparation of the deal becomes obvious.
Based on the results of the auction, we can already confidently say that high-level Russian-Italian friendship has moved to a qualitatively new level - similar to the one demonstrated by Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder a couple of years ago. It seems that in this regard, Italian investors have a feeling that multi-billion dollar investments in Russia and the risks associated with them will eventually pay off. True, in order not to ruin the result achieved on Russian soil, ENI will have to let Gazprom into energy assets in the Apennines and North Africa. According to unofficial data, the companies have almost agreed on the purchase by Gazprom of minority stakes in the electric subsidiary EniPower and gas fields on the Libyan shelf.
The auction itself was quite nervous. The auction participants did not enter the hall together, as is usually the case, but one at a time - the delay was explained by the formalities of the security service. Auctioneer Sergei Mishin, while announcing the list of YUKOS property included in the lot, twice misread the name of one of the small companies, and also got confused when reading the amount of bills. At 11:14 a.m. he started the auction. At the third step, I mixed up the participant number. But then, when the bargaining took place only between Enineftegaz and Nefttradegroup, the tension was noticeable only on the faces of the representatives of the Italian company. None of the participants confirmed the price of the 27th step, and at 11.20 Enineftegaz was declared the winner, which agreed to buy the lot for 151.536 billion rubles.
The very first contender for YUKOS gas assets - the head of the ESN group Grigory Berezkin - ultimately did not participate in the auction. Initially, as informed sources told Vremya Novostey, ENI and Enel went to the auction together with him - they created the Energaz company last year, where the unified social tax owned 51%, and the Italians owned 30 and 19%, respectively. Mr. Berezkin ended up in the deal, it is believed, under the patronage of Gazprom and personally the deputy chairman of the concern, Alexander Ryazanov, who soon after this (in October last year) left his post at the concern. Nevertheless, until recently, the Unified Social Tax remained in business and, according to some information, even found the $3 billion needed to pay for its share in the price of the lot. However, as Vremya Novostei sources say, the final list of auction participants was approved based on the results of Vladimir’s visit Putin to Italy.
The official representative of the company, Vladimir Voevoda, explained the meaning of participation in the auction of the Rosneft structure by the fact that very interesting and promising assets were being sold that could be useful to the state structure. However, according to him, the investment committee under the board of directors the day before set the maximum price for the lot, beyond which it would be unprofitable for the owners of Rosneft to bargain, so Rosneft did not become the winner. However, most likely, Rosneft, as a creditor of YUKOS, simply carefully increased the price of the lot, because the outcome of the auction was predetermined - this is evidenced by the fact that Gazprom, even before the auction, agreed with ENI and Enel on the division of the property sold yesterday.
With the announcement of the structure of the deal between the Italian buyers and the Russian “beneficiary” of the auction results - Gazprom - a funny thing also happened. ENI was so pleased with the acquisition of the companies that it issued a press release that contradicted the comments that one of the main negotiators on the Russian side, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Gas Concern Alexander Medvedev, managed to share with journalists. He, in particular, said that Gazprom received an option to buy out at least 51% of the shares in the former gas assets of YUKOS (Arcticgas, Urengoil and Neftegaztekhnologii). And the official statement of the Italian company spoke of a proposal for the concern to purchase strictly 51% from the winners. In addition, Mr. Medvedev cautiously noted that the monopoly has not yet made a decision to purchase a 20% stake in Gazprom Neft, although his personal point of view is that these shares should go in full to Gazprom (which already owns 75.6% shares of the oil company). The Italians, in a press release, recklessly shared with the public information that Enineftegaz would give the shares of Gazprom Neft to ENI itself, which had already given Gazprom an option valid for two years to buy them back for $3.7 billion ( 96 billion rubles). That is why Enel, which remains aloof from the further fate of this package, will finance only its 40% share in payment for Yukos gas assets in the amount of $852 million. However, on the ENI website the message was very quickly corrected (51% corrected to a minimum 51%, and information about the future of Gazprom Neft shares completely disappeared), but a new version has not appeared in Russian.
The piquancy of the situation was that Gazprom received the right to buy shares of the oil company at a price lower than the market value of this asset. Based on the capitalization of Gazprom Neft on the RTS on the eve of trading, 20% of its shares can be valued at $3.8 billion, and yesterday they rose to almost $4 billion. Mr. Medvedev himself happily told reporters that the assets at the auction YUKOS were purchased for even more than the amount for which YUKOS shareholders offered to sell them to Gazprom last summer - before the start of bankruptcy proceedings. However, according to ENI's initial report, the Russian concern will have to pay all the costs of the transactions, and this, according to experts, will cost it several tens of millions of dollars.
In addition, the deputy chairman of the board of Gazprom said that, in his opinion, options issued for two years should be implemented as soon as possible. And ENI, as a source close to this company says, would very much like to keep 20% of Gazprom Neft along with the due reserves (678 million barrels) on its balance sheet.
Apparently, the terms of the options are drawn up in such a way that Italian concerns are obliged not only to sell controlling stakes in Arcticgas and other purchased companies to Gazprom, but also, under certain conditions, to completely part with these assets. And these conditions are most likely related to the plans of the Russian monopolist to gain a foothold on Italian territory. The Enel press service told Vremya Novostey yesterday that to manage Russian assets it is planned to “create an operator company that will provide services to the owners of the fields” acquired at yesterday’s auction. Moreover, only ENI and Gazprom will be included in it, and Enel will remain a simple shareholder. Obviously, the distribution of shares in this operator company also depends on the success of Gazprom’s expansion into the Italian market, where it may be planned to create a similar structure.
The third auction for the sale of Yukos property did not take place. As official representative of the Russian Federal Property Fund Nikolai Nikolaev said yesterday, not a single application was submitted to participate in the auction for lot number three. This lot, the starting price of which is 261 million rubles, included YUKOS shares in research and service companies - Alnas Tsunar LLC (100%), Alnas Electron (100%), Alnasmash (100 %), "Alnasmashservice" (100%), "Alnas RD" (100%), "Business Resource" (99%), "Control-Service" (51%). As the press secretary of the YUKOS bankruptcy trustee, Nikolai Lashkevich, told reporters, after some time the committee of creditors will decide whether to put the lot up for re-sale with a lower starting price or reorganize it.