Presently Gutseriev has more petrol stations in the metropolitan area than any other company.

RussNeft was established in September 2002 and is owned by Mikhail Gutseriev and his partners. The company joins together 25 small producing entities with total recoverable reserves exceeding 600 million tons of crude oil. A financial partner of RussNeft in acquiring some of these assets was first-rate international trader Glencore. Last year RussNeft produced 10 million tons of crude oil. Currently its daily oil output corresponds to 15 million tons if rated on a yearly basis. The company also structures a transport entity and a retail network operating in 13 regions of Russia and CIS. According to Russia’s standards of business accounting, the 2004 earnings of RussNeft were 27.4 billion rubles and net profit amounted to 4.7 billions.
Some time ago Gutseriev bought a petrol stations network named Korus, as the Vedomosti has come to know from several participants of the fuel market. Yesterday RussNeft’s representative Edward Sarkisov confirmed the fact. He also clarified that the deal had been finalized this week and beginning from the 1st of November the petrol stations operating under Korus brand would pass under the management of RussNeft. They would also be renamed in the nearest future. Sarkisov informed that the acquired assets included 31 petrol stations in Moscow and in the nearest Moscow region, five petrol stations in the Smolensk region, oil tank farms in Solnechnogorsk and Smolensk and 24 petrol tankers. He didn’t disclose the amount of the deal. As the interlocutor of the Vedomosti points out, the expansion of the company’s retail network is part of RussNeft’s policy to become vertically integrated. According to him, several months ago RussNeft bought Vologda’s ANTICOM Invest LLC, possessing 50 petrol stations mostly in Vologda and Cherepovets. This network covers approximately 30% of the local oil products market.
The next move, according to Sarkisov, must be acquisition or construction of own refinery. In the meantime the petrol stations are to be supplied with the oil products yielded at the refinery in Syzran (belonging to Yukos Oil Company), where RussNeft has a long-term processing agreement for 3 million tons of crude oil per year. The company also plans to acquire part of oil products from the market.
Yuri Safronov, General Director of Korus Pteroleum running this network, has neither confirmed nor disproved the actual sale of the business having refused to make any comments on this matter. However a source in Korus Holding has confirmed to the Vedomosti that the network is sold out and the amount of the deal is ‘somewhere close to $100 million’. According to this source, the refueling business was quite prosperous, but was sold out because Gutseriev offered a good price.
A top-manager of a big oil company working in the Moscow area says that Korus was displayed for sale in the end of summer and at that time they spoke about $100 million as a price of the deal. “At that time we did our estimation and got a figure of about $70 million,” said the interlocutor of the Vedomosti. According to him, the petrol stations of Korus were put up in the end of the nineties, some of them even as far back as in the Soviet time, and do not offer a variety of services. At the same time he has noted high efficiency of the Smolensk petrol stations as they are located close to Byelorussian frontier cross points which ensures good
President of Moscow Fuel Association Eugine Arkusha referred to Gutseriev’s acquisition as ‘a great decision’ and particularly pointed out that now Russneft has become the biggest retailer at market of Moscow and its region. In fact, taking into account Grand petrol stations bought in March, RussNeft has now 95 petrol stations in the area, of which 14 are in the nearest Podmoskoviye. Its next competitor MTK belonging to Moscow Oil and Gas Company has 75 active petrol stations in Moscow. The share of Russneft at the metropolitan market is now 11.3 %.