Bashneft became the only bidder for Trebs and Titov fields in Russia’s Arctic when OAO Surgutneftegas failed to make a necessary cash deposit, a spokeswoman at Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources said yesterday, declining to be identified because of ministry policy.
Yevtushenkov has built Russia’s fastest growing oil company from Soviet-era fields by using his purchasing power to resolve politically sensitive ownership disputes. His AFK Sistema group has spent more than $3 billion buying shares in Bashneft and OAO Russneft. Output at Bashneft has jumped 25 percent since he took control last year.
The Trebs and Titov oil fields, discovered in the Soviet era, may hold more than 200 million metric tons, or 1.47 billion barrels, of recoverable oil reserves, according to the government. That compares with the 2.13 billion barrels of proven, possible and probable reserves Bashneft said it held in the second quarter of 2010, citing a Miller and Lent’s audit.
Yevtushenkov, Russia’s 13th richest man with a $7.5 billion fortune according to Forbes, controls OAO Mobile TeleSystems, Russia’s largest mobile phone operator, and is championing Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s push to have the Glonass satellite navigation project to compete with the U.S. Global Positioning System.
Tender Process
Bashneft, which still has to pass through the ministry’s tender process, will likely get the fields, Oleg Maximov, Valery Nesterov and Alex Fak, oil and gas analysts at Troika Dialog wrote in research yesterday.
“The fields’ net present value, estimated at $1.3 billion in our view, contributes about 15 percent to the company’s market cap and represents a free option on Bashneft stock and the market has somehow yet to appraise this,” the note said.
Bashneft has submitted the necessary documents and deposits for the tender and aims to win the fields, a company spokeswoman said.
The ministry in September said it rejected bids from OAO Lukoil and TNK-BP, Russia’s second- and third-largest oil producers, as well as OAO Gazprom Neft and India’s Oil & Natural Gas Corp.
Sistema’s target is to create a business valued at more than $10 billion, Alexander Korsik, the group’s head of oil, said in an interview last month.
Bashneft has gained 60 percent this year, raising its market value to $7.1 billion, while the RTS index in Moscow has gained 9.8 percent.
Ownership Clash
Sistema gained control of Bashneft last year, ending an ownership clash between the federal government and Bashkortostan region. The former leader of the Urals Russia region, Murtaza Rakhimov, sold the energy assets to structures with undisclosed ownership in 2003.
“Russia’s political elite, for whatever reason, have chosen Sistema as an agent of compromise to resolve disputes and so far Sistema is adding value,” said Igor Kurinnyy, an oil analyst at ING Groep NV.
Sistema aims to boost combined output at Bashneft and Russneft, in which it owns 49 percent, to about 600,000 barrels a day in the next several years from 550,000 barrels of oil a day now, about Bashneft’s refining capacity now, Korsik said. His estimates excluded potential output gains should Bashneft win the Arctic fields.
