Surgutneftegas May Buy Yuganskneftegaz??

Russia’s fourth largest oil company Surgutneftegaz is seen as the main contender to buy Yukos’ main production asset, Yuganskneftegaz, Britain’s Financial Times newspaper reported on Thursday, July 22. The newspaper quoted a number of market analysts who believe that Surgutneftegaz is an “obvious candidate” with political support.

Surgutneftegaz is a perfect buyer for Yuganskneftegaz for several reasons, the newspaper wrote. First of all it words in the same region as Yukos’ subsidiary and so it would be easy to merge the assets of two companies. Secondly, Surgut has enough free cash to pay for the purchase without even attracting loans from banks. Thirdly, a purchase of Yukos’ main asset by another private company would help to assuage the investors of fears that the government plans to start a de-privatization process.

MosNews wrote earlier that Yukos announced government plans to put its major production asset, Yuganskneftegaz, up for sale. The price tag put on the asset by the authorities is $1.75 billion. Yukos claims the assets of Yuganskneftegaz were valued at $2 billion as of May 2004, and the proven and probable reserves of this subsidiary amount to another $30.4 billion.


HERE