RusEnergy

13.12.2005 IntelliNews Today - According to oil major Tatneft’s press-release its oil output grew 1.77% y/y in November and amounted to 2.506mn tons. Of that, Tatneft itself produced 2.037mn tons and the rest was extracted by the company’s subsidiaries. Tatneft’s output in Jan-Nov increased by 0.95% y/y and amounted to 23.222mn tons. In this way, the company exceeded its planned production for Jan-Nov by 2.8% and by 1.48% for the whole 2005.

14.12.2005 MosNews - Russian-British oil major TNK-BP said on Wednesday, Dec. 14, that it had hired a former Chevron executive to become its chief financial officer. James Martin Owen will become the company's new CFO in mid-January. The previous top financial executive Kent Potter retired in August this year. The statement said Owen has more than 30 years of experience in the oil industry and has spent much of his career working with U.S. major Chevron in financial roles around the world. "Most recently he held the position of general manager for finance and the role of board secretary at Tengizchevroil in Kazakhstan," the statement said, quoted by the Reuters agency. Tengiz, led by Chevron, is the largest of Kazakhstan's production ventures.

Moscow, December 14 (RIA Novosti) - Yuganskneftegaz, the main production subsidiary of state-owned oil company Rosneft, is to produce 56 mln mt (1.12 mln bbl/d) of crude in 2006, Rosneft said Wednesday. The figure is slightly below the 57 mln mt target that Sergei Bulba, the head of Yuganskneftegaz, gave last month, but would represent an increase of as much as 12% from current output levels. The firm produced 38 mln mt in the first nine months of 2005. Yuganskneftegaz aims to reach its peak production level of 70 mln mt/yr within the next five years, Bulba has said. The output level is set out in an agreement signed Wednesday in Moscow by Rosneft, Yuganskneftegaz and the government of West Siberia's Khanti-Mansiysk autonomous region, where Yuganskneftegaz is based. The agreement also envisages natural gas production of 1.4 bln cu m. Capital investment is to reach 40.3 bln rubles ($1.4 bln), up from 30 bln rubles this year. The agreement also requires the firm to spend 265 mln rubles on "social and cultural" projects in the Khanty-Mansiysk region.

LONDON, December 14 (RIA Novosti, Alexander Smotrov) - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will decide whether to continue funding Sakhalin-2, a Russian oil and gas production sharing agreement, only after 120-day consultations on the project's ecological and social implications, the bank's president said Wednesday. "The companies included in the Sakhalin Energy consortium have submitted documents to us on how they have already improved the situation and what else they plan to do in these areas, and we have decided to start public consultations on these documents," Jean Lemiere said. Sakhalin Energy was established by Shell (owning a 55% stake), and two Japanese companies, Mitsui (25%) and Mitsubishi (20%), to implement and develop the Sakhalin 2 project, the cost of which is estimated at over $20 billion. The consortium turned to EBRD, which had financed the first stage of the project, with a request to continue funding for the second stage. This includes the construction of two oil platforms, and an underwater pipeline to the northern tip of the Sakhalin Island in Russia's Far East, and to a natural gas liquefaction plant. EBRD's main concerns are related to the threat to the population of gray whales off the coast of Sakhalin Island, the pipeline's route across thousands of small rivers, the planned construction of a waste disposal storage unit in Aniva Bay and the project's social influence on Sakhalin's population. Lemiere said that certain progress had already been achieved after Sakhalin Energy proposed to change the route of the pipeline's underwater segment to minimize damage to the population of gray whales. The organization is working in close coordination with a group of international experts on the issue.

RBC, 09.12.2005, Vologda region 18:52:33 – The growing gas demand in Germany and the EU will be fully satisfied, Gazprom's CEO Alexei Miller told a press conference today. The construction of the North European Gas Pipeline is the largest investment project in Europe, Miller added. Regarding environmental concerns over the pipeline's Baltic sea floor location, Miller said that no environmental studies had revealed any particular risks. Gazprom has just started constructing the pipeline's overland part. The pipeline will go to Germany, the Netherlands and finally to Great Britain, bypassing the Baltic countries, Ukraine and Poland. The full completion of the pipeline is expected by 2013. Overall investments are to exceed EUR4bn.

RBC, 09.12.2005, Moscow 13:44:37.Russian oil exports dropped 2.6 percent to some 192.7m tons in January to October 2005 against the same period last year, the federal customs service reported. At the same time, oil export revenues surged by 44.39 percent to $64.3171bn. In particular, exports to countries outside the CIS stepped up 1.62 percent to some 176.5m tons, or $59.695bn in the first ten months of this year. Exports to the CIS decreased by 11.87 percent to some 16.2m tons, or $4.6219bn in the period in question. Russia is expected to produce 475m tons of oil this year and to increase its oil output by 2 percent in 2006.

05.12.2005 MosNews - Russia's largest private oil company Lukoil plans to ensure that there is no oversupply of the country's oil in Europe, CEO Vagit Alekperov was quoted as saying on Sunday, Dec. 4. "We will ensure that Europe is no longer oversupplied with Russian oil," Alekperov told German business daily Handelsblatt, according to a preview of the paper's Monday edition, Reuters reported. "Russian Urals crude oil ought to be significantly more expensive than it is now. New pipelines to China will take Russian, Kazakh and Azerbaijani oil away from Europe," he said, adding that the price of oil in Europe would rise. Alekperov said Lukoil planned to become one of the world's three biggest listed oil firms, and that it had a strategy until 2014 and the necessary oil and gas reserves to achieve this. "We want our oil drilling to reach 780 million barrels per year and to attain an annual gas production of 50 billion cubic meters a year," he added, without specifying a time frame. The company's CEO also noted that Lukoil had no plans to buy up units of the embattled Russian oil firm Yukos, saying that the latter had ramped up output unnaturally high and exhausted its resources. "We on the other hand will only increase our production by about two to four percent a year," he said. He said the company hoped the situation in Iraq would stabilize sufficiently for it to return to work on oil fields there soon. "I hope we'll get clarity from the new government about our business opportunities there by the end of 2006," he said, adding he planned to travel to Baghdad by May.

MOSCOW, December 7 (RIA Novosti) - The First Wholesale Generating Company (OGK-1) is set to sign a 30-year deal on guaranteed natural gas supplies with Russian-British joint venture TNK-BP, the OGK-1 general director said Wednesday. Vladimir Khlebnikov said the sides had already agreed on guaranteed natural gas supplies for 15 years. "They [TNK-BP] are agreeing to sign a 15-year contract, but we are planning to sign a 30-year agreement on guaranteed natural gas supplies to OGK-1 in two weeks," he said. OGK-1, founded in March of this year, comprises six state district power plants.

06.12.2005 MosNews - On Monday, Dec. 5, Russia and Syria signed two major gas industry contracts worth $370 million. The contract signing took place in Damascus. The first contract presupposes construction of a 324 kilometer-long section of the pipeline that will run from the Syrian-Jordanian border to ar-Rayan, 160 kilometers north of Damascus. The Russian company Stroitrangaz, the main contractor of Russia's natural gas monopoly Gazprom, won the contract to design and lay this section of the pipeline. The price of this part of the contract is about $160 million. The second contract, also signed by Stroitransgaz, presupposes construction of a gas processing plant near the town of Palmyra, where three large gas deposits are located. Both projects are set to be implemented in little less than two years.