Translated material
3.8 billion for the service
Unitex profitably resold Yukos assets to Rosneft
The purchase of Yukos assets outside of the auctions held in the spring is costly for Rosneft. Yesterday the company announced that it had signed agreements with the company Unitex on the acquisition of distribution networks of 495 gas stations and eight oil depots in the central region for 16.3 billion rubles. ($628 million) and the bankruptcy trustee of YUKOS, Eduard Rebgun, on the purchase of the southern assets of YUKOS, including 100% of Stavropolnefteprodukt, for 4.9 billion rubles. ($188 million). Moreover, in the first case, the state company is forced to offer Unitex 30% more than the price set during the auction. And in the second case - to pay the price of the auction winner to the Promregion Holding company, affiliated with the management of LUKOIL, which, as is known, was unable to obtain permission from the Federal Antimonopoly Service to purchase the southern lot. However, experts note that, despite the large premium, Rosneft made very profitable purchases, allowing it to take second place in the number of gas stations in Russia after LUKOIL.Auctions for the sale of distribution networks and southern assets of YUKOS took place in early May. In the auction for the southern lot (100% of Stavropolnefteprodukt, blocking stakes in Krasnodar energy companies, a license for the Black Sea section of Shatsky Val, 51% in Yu-Kuban and 49.9% in the Caspian Oil Company) Rosneft took part through its subsidiary Neft-Aktiv LLC. However, during the auction, the oil company quickly lost to Promregion Holding. As Rosneft said then, pay 4.9 billion rubles. for such assets did not make sense. But a few weeks later, when the FAS prohibited Promregion Holding from purchasing these assets and the bankruptcy manager offered Rosneft the same lot at the winner’s price, the state-owned company immediately announced its readiness to purchase it.
Rosneft refused to participate in the auction for the sale of 16 YUKOS gas stations in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Bryansk, Belgorod, Lipetsk, Voronezh, Ulyanovsk, Penza and Tambov regions, as well as the aviation fuel distribution network at the very last moment. The company explained this by the opacity of the financial flows of these enterprises. As a result, three companies fought for gas stations: Shell, TNK-BP and the unknown Unitex. The latter beat the Anglo-Dutch concern in a twenty-minute struggle, offering 12.46 billion rubles for the lot.
Rosneft does not mention the reasons that forced the oil company to overpay more than 3.8 billion rubles, noting only that “this is the price that the company was willing to pay.” Of the entire lot, Rosneft refused only five enterprises: the Rostov oil depot "Rostov-Terminal", the company "Energoservice", which carries out maintenance and reconstruction of power plants, two enterprises involved in the sale of aviation fuel ("Air Terminal" and "YUKOS Aviation Marketing"), as well as the company "Agroneftiprokunt". As a Rosneft representative noted, the company was not interested in these assets.
The new acquisitions will allow Rosneft to increase the number of its own gas stations to almost 1.2 thousand. This is comparable to LUKOIL’s largest gas station network in Russia, consisting of approximately 1.6 thousand gas stations. “Considering that these networks already have their own oil depots and have established raw material supply schemes, Rosneft’s deals can be called quite profitable,” notes the head of the Moscow Fuel Association, Evgeny Arkusha. “Especially since now in the central region there are practically no new unoccupied sites for gas stations and companies can make new acquisitions only on the secondary market.” However, he refused to determine how market-oriented the price of the transaction was. “We don’t know what’s behind it, what mechanisms were used to close it,” he emphasized, noting only that in Moscow and St. Petersburg, a ready-made gas station could cost the company at least $3 million.