Novedades de Petroleo y Algo mas

ExxonMobil Corp. down 6.9% for the week, shares negative year-to-date
by Jasmina Kelemen
Oil and gas shares got caught in Wall Street’s maelstrom registering sharp losses at the close Friday despite bullish commodity signals that kept oil prices aloft for most of the week.

by Anna Malpas
Artists in a special project of the Moscow Biennale explore the impact of oil on culture, politics and society.

Rebgun and another Yukos manager, Sergei Tregub, have been nominated to the nine-seat board, Vedomosti reported Thursday, citing sources familiar with the nominations.

Rebgun’s spokesman Nikolai Lashkevich confirmed on Thursday that Yukos had nominated two candidates to Rosneft’s board, but declined to give their names. Rosneft also declined to comment. Rosneft could potentially vote for Rebgun if it buys its shares from Yukos later this month and select him to the board at a shareholders’ meeting that should take place before July. Thus, Rebgun could sit on the Rosneft board and be remunerated by Rosneft even as he manages the auctions of Yukos property in which Rosneft could be a bidder.

Rosneft has yet to call a shareholders’ meeting to select board members. Georgy Ivanin, an oil and gas analyst at investment company Atlanta Capital, predicted that the sales of Yukos assets would last until the end of the year.

Yukos owns 9.44 percent of Rosneft, but this stake will change hands at a March 27 auction. Rosneft is seen as the likeliest buyer. There could be a deal between Rosneft and Rebgun that the company will support his candidacy if it buys the shares, said UralSib oil and gas analyst Alexei Kormshchikov.

Rosneft cannot nominate Rebgun after it buys the shares because it will have likely missed the deadline. Shareholders should nominate candidates within a certain period after the New Year.

This period is 30 days if the corporate charter does not say otherwise. A Rosneft spokesman declined to discuss the time frame but Vedomosti reported that Thursday was the deadline.

Rebgun, director of consultancy Biznes Lotsia, became Yukos receiver courtesy of Rosneft, which proposed him as external manager in spring 2006. A court endorsed the proposal. Rosneft also has representatives in the Yukos creditors’ committee as the largest creditor after the Federal Tax Service. Alexander Temerko, a former Yukos vice president, said last summer that Rosneft was de facto running Yukos, a statement Rosneft denied.

Kormshchikov said he was baffled by Rebgun’s reported nomination, agreeing that his appointment would create a conflict of interests. "If Rosneft needed favorable conditions at the auctions, it could have arranged them in a less public way," he said. "Rosneft has all the chances anyway."

Ivanin of Atlanta Capital said Rebgun’s appointment to the board would not drastically change the conditions for the auctions or put off other potential bidders. As Rosneft has its representatives on the creditors’ committee and is a principal potential bidder, there is already a serious conflict of interests, he said.

Claire Davidson, a spokeswoman for Yukos majority shareholder GML and Yukos’ London-based managers, could not be reached immediately for comment Thursday. In a statement last week, she condemned the auctions, saying it was wrong to apply discounts to the starting price of "what the world knows to be extremely valuable assets."

The Moscow Times

Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller and BP CEO Lord Browne discussed the venture during an hour-long meeting at Gazprom’s headquarters in Moscow.

"The creation of a joint venture for developing the companies’ international businesses, including LNG, was discussed," Gazprom said in a statement.

Gazprom and BP spokespeople declined to provide further details, stressing that the talks were at a preliminary stage. Browne later met with Gazprom board chairman and First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

TNK-BP, BP’s joint venture with billionaires Mikhail Fridman, Viktor Vekselberg and Leonard Blavatnik, has come under increasing state pressure as the Kremlin moves to take more control of the oil and gas sector.

TNK-BP is the midst of tough talks with Gazprom over the state-run giant’s proposed entry into TNK-BP’s flagship Kovykta project in east Siberia, which holds an estimated 1.9 trillion cubic meters of gas. Gazprom spokesman Sergei Kupriyanov said the company chiefs discussed TNK-BP, but declined to provide further details. Gazprom has been seeking to expand into LNG, a form of gas that is cooled until it is liquefied, thus allowing for shipment by tanker worldwide, beyond the reach of pipelines.

Although LNG still accounts for a small share of BP’s global business, the company also hopes to grow its LNG cargo trading, BP spokesman Toby Odone said from London.

Gazprom signed a deal in December to take a controlling stake in Shell-run Sakhalin-2, the site of the country’s first LNG plant. And while Gazprom has said that the huge Shtokman field in the Barents Sea will use pipelines in its first phase, some analysts believe it may still try to explore LNG there as well.

"Gazprom is interested in cooperating with international companies because it needs the technical expertise," said Tanya Costello, an analyst with Eurasia Group.

Analysts agree that Gazprom lacks the know-how to develop Shtokman on its own. Gazprom said in October that it had rejected bids for equity stakes from five shortlisted foreign companies and would instead keep 100 percent of the project.

"It could be that they’re thinking of Shtokman," said Alexander Burgansky, an oil and gas analyst at Renaissance Capital. "They’re certainly not going to be building an LNG train in the middle of Siberia."

State environmental officials have threatened to pull the Kovykta project’s production license, accusing TNK-BP of failing to fulfill its production obligations, while Gazprom continues to block the construction of an export pipeline to China.

"There are various indicators inside Russia that settling this issue surrounding TNK-BP and the development of Kovykta are becoming more of a priority," Costello said.

The Moscow Times