Oil Company RussNeft OAO concluded an agreement with Yukos’ (РТС: YUKO) subsidiary Finanse B.V. on the purchase of its 49% stake at Slovakian Pipeline Company Transpetrol A.S. for $103 million, Yukos said in a statement.
The agreement was signed by the parties on February 4. The deal is expected to be completed within 90 day upon approval by Slovakian antimonopoly bodies and authorization by the Slovakian Economics Ministry.
“The negotiations which we have been holding with the Slovakian Government for the past months have proved most fruitful. We have agreed that the proposals submitted by RussNeft meet the requirements of all the parties concerned,” the press-release cited Yukos President Steven Theede.
As was reported earlier, in 2005 Yukos’ Board of Directors decided to sell foreign assets of the company and use the means thus obtained to repay the outstanding debts to the creditors.
The stake at Transpetrol was bought by Yukos in 2002 for $74 million.
Transpetrol’s oil pipeline system extends to 1032 km and has 21 million ton capacity. Transpetrol possesses 512 km of Druzhba pipeline. The Government of Slovakia holds 51% stake at Transpetrol. In 2005 10.662 million tons of crude oil was pumped through the company’s pipeline system.
The biggest consumer of Russian crude oil in Slovakia is Slovnaft, a Slovakian subsidiary of Hungarian company MOL Rt. RussNeft annually delivers nearly three million tons of crude oil to Slovakia covering 50% of the country’s requirement in crude oil. RussNeft is a partner of MOL at Russian Joint Venture Zapadno-Malobalykskoye OOO.
When talking earlier about the interest of the company towards the stake at Transpetrol head of RussNeft Mikhail Gutseriev pointed out that RussNeft delivered its own crude oil to the region. “To deliver crude it is interesting for us to have this pipe,” said he.
