BASF became a pioneer

Gazprom conducted the first exchange of assets with foreigners

The German petrochemical concern BASF became the first foreign company that managed to exchange assets with Gazprom. On December 17, the head of the Russian gas monopolist, Alexey Miller, and the chairman of the board of BASF, Jurgen Hambrecht, signed documents on the deal. The German group became a shareholder of Severneftegazprom, which owns the license for the large Yuzhno-Russkoye field. And Gazprom increased its stake in the gas transportation company Wingas, which sells Russian gas in Germany and some other European countries, and also develops its own gas distribution infrastructure (pipes and underground storage facilities). In addition, Gazprom received 49 percent shares in two concessions in Libya. Despite the successful completion of negotiations and legal formalities of this deal, the Kremlin’s idea of ​​cooperation with Western investors based on an equal exchange of assets could not be put into practice. And BASF's experience may be the first and the last.

The concept of a partnership between Russia and the West in the field of energy based on the exchange of assets appeared about two years ago, when Vladimir Putin was preparing to host the first home G8 summit. Its essence was clearly explained to foreign colleagues by the President of Russia personally in May last year (two months before the historic event in St. Petersburg): “If our partners expect that we will give them access to infrastructure, production and transportation, then the question arises: what will we get? Maybe also access to infrastructure, production and transportation? But which ones? Where is your production, what deposits will you let us into, what main pipelines do you have? If that is not the case—and it is not—then we must find a way to adequately compensate.” And he gave an example: “It’s like when I was a child - you went out into the yard, you held a candy, and they said to you: “Give me some candy.” You squeeze it into your sweaty fist and ask: “What do you want me to do?”

In adult life, it quickly became clear that Russia was not given anything special in exchange for oil and gas “candy.” Although there was practically no major oil and gas corporation in the world with which Gazprom would not discuss the prospects of exchanging assets, it was only possible to reach the end with BASF. It has not yet been possible to reach an agreement with another potential contender for a share in the South Russian project - Europe's largest energy concern E.ON.

The situation was even more complicated with the project for the development of the Shtokman gas condensate field on the shelf of the Barents Sea. A year ago, Gazprom miserably canceled a tender based on the principle of asset exchange, and recently hired France's Total and Norway's NorskHydro, which agreed to invest in infrastructure without receiving a stake in the company holding the license to develop Shtokman.

Irina TSYRULEVA, Natalya ROMANOVA, Nikolay KOCHELYAGIN, Alexey GRIVACH, Nikolay GORELOV, Andrey DENISOV