Russian ministry urged to unblock Yukos accounts

A top Russian energy official urged the justice ministry yesterday to unfreeze the bank accounts of the country's largest oil producer Yukos because its breakdown could see world oil prices soar.

The comments represented a rare piece of good news for Russia's wounded giant since they appeared to win over a senior government official to its cause.

Even so, its implications were not immediately clear and the company's stock dipped half a percent to $3.7 on the benchmark RTS exchange on low trade volume.

"If the company cannot pay for its equipment" and for its operations "it will have to stop pumping oil," Sergei Oganisyan, head of the federal energy agency that reports to the ministry of industry and energy, told reporters.

"This will hurt world oil prices," he said. A Yukos spokesman told the Interfax news agency that the company was still exporting oil as of yesterday.

World prices have been hovering at historic highs for days amid confusion over Yukos and uncertainty about Iraq, while consumption soars in the summer season.

The Russian energy official urged the justice ministry "to unblock Yukos accounts so that the company's activities could continue." There was no immediate reaction from the bailiffs.

He said that Yukos had only paid tariffs on its rail shipments and customs duties through Tuesday and that exports could now theoretically halt.

The Yukos spokesman, Alexander Shadrin, told Interfax that "we are holding talks with the Transneft (the pipeline monopoly) and the Russian railways to prevent stoppages in oil supply."

Founded by its jailed chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Yukos produces about 1.7 million barrels of oil per day - equivalent to about one fifth of Saudi Arabia's output.


HERE