RusEnergy

KAZAN, February 28 (RIA Novosti) - Tatneft oil company has confirmed its interest in purchasing shares of Transpetrol company belonging to Yukos. As press secretary of the company Rustam Rafikov told RIA Novosti, Tatneft is studying the possibility of buying the Transpetrol shares. On Friday Russian President Vladimir Putin told at the press conference in Bratislava about Tatneft's interest in purchasing 49% of the shares of the Slovak company now belonging to Yukos. As the Tatneft officials told RIA Novosti, Transpetrol manages the transit oil pipelines on Slovakia's territory, and is the operator of the Slovak section of the Druzhba (Friendship) oil pipeline with a length of 515 km and a capacity of 21 million metric tons a year. As many as 10 million metric tons of oil were pumped through it in 2003, among them 5,52 million metric tons to the Slovnaft oil refinery. Yukos purchased 49% of Transpetrol shares for $74 million as a result of the privatization tender in spring 2002. The government of Slovakia owns 51% of Transpetrol's shares. In November 2004 Slovakia's Minister of Economics Pavol Rusko stated that Slovakia's government was ready to buy out Yukos' share. It is also known that the implementation of the first phase of the project of the Odessa-Brody main oil pipeline - an experiment with the participation of Ukrainian Ukrtransnafta and Czech Mero and Unipetrol to pump light petroleum to Czech oil refinery in Kralupy - depends on Transpetrol's position. Transpetrol also cites the necessity to attract the Russian side. Last year this question was a subject of intergovernmental talks between Ukraine and Slovakia.