Giovedì, 28 maggio, 2015
Recently there have been sent a number of clear signals that Russian state oil giant Rosneft is facing some problems. Some international mass media reported that “Surgutneftegaz” was planning to buy 19,5% of “Rosneft” stake and to refinance its debt.
This information was denied by Dmitri Shuvalov, first Vice-Minister of Russian Federation. Following this statement also representatives of “Surgutneftegaz” renounced to the deal, saying that these rumors are aimed at stock markets destabilizatio, as this news led to a 8,36% company’s share drops on May 12th.
Rosneft has a huge debt of 23,5 billion dollars to be paid by the end of the year. The company has previously asked $25 billions from the National Welfare fund, but its request was not satisfied.
At the same time, Rosneft itself confirmed its interest in attracting reliable Russian investors and specified that Surgutneftegaz is one of them, thus non excluding a possibility of stake purchase in case the government makes this specific request.
Rosneft is not only facing financial problems, due to its huge debt, but it also fears to lose its monopoly in the Arctic’s resources exploration in view of competition of private actors in the sector, namely “Lukoil”. Rosneft accused Russian Ministry of Nature (Minpriroda) of lobbying private oil companies, after it proposed a series of laws, liberating the access to the Arctic oil reserves. While before only the state-owned Rosneft and Gazprom controlled over 80% of Rissia’s Arctic territories, now it is proposed to create consortiums following the Norwegian model with a possibility of private companies participation, the possibility they were deprived of since 2008.
Rosneft is obviously against this proposal, even though with the introduction of sanctions it became clear that it cannot work efficiently in its exploration areas, with the major foreign companies, like ExxonMobil, Eni, Statoil having left and the impossibility to order the necessary drilling equipment.
Nevertheless, the Russian government seems to be willing to proceed anyways with the liberization process which can sign an important shift from the complete reliance on the state-owned monopolist to more market oriented policies.