Rearrangement of Property in the Oil and Gas Sector

Preparations for the elections are accompanied by quite serious changes in the structure of property of oil and gas companies. After the elections this process will accelerate further. A plan of privatization in the next three years is already drafted; it will directly or indirectly affect assets in the oil and gas sector. There is also a less explicit “creeping privatization”, e.g. when the state transfers licenses on beneficial conditions to private companies removing other bidders from tenders. The number of such cases is growing. Privatization is an old goal of major administrative and political groups and the means of minimizing political risks in the period of enhanced political turbulence. Liberal experts have formed a firm opinion that the state presence in the sector is growing. In reality there is an opposite process. The matter is that new owners of assets are loyal people.

The report elaborates on the following issues:

• Main beneficiaries of privatization.

• Privatization plan

  • What will the government sell for sure and what is likely to go on sale in the next three to six years
  • Prospects of selling Rosneft and Gazprom Neft

• Role of foreign companies in privatization

  • Transfer of licenses to private companies on preferential terms with the aim to sell stakes in them to nonresidents
  • Cases of Trebs and Titov and Yamal projects

• Possibilities of privatization in the gas industry

  • Prospects of emergence of new “Novateks”

• The future of large private firms

  • Strategies of LUKOIL and TNK-BP, prospects of changing the companies’ shareholder structure
  • The future of TNK-BP in the context of the Rosneft-BP case
  • A possibility of disclosing real shareholders in Surgutneftegas

• AFK Sistema’s involvement in the oil business

  • Reasons and future results
  • Consolidation of Bashneft and Russneft

The contents of the report: