Oil Company RussNeft OAO is planning this year to complete deals on acquisition of a number of other upstream assets, the company’s President Mikhail Gutseriev informed the press. According to him, presently the company is negotiating the purchase of such assets. At this, Mikhail Gutseriev declined to specify either location or price of the assets.
“Within 3 years we have bought 30 companies, and the price is the essence of this activity,” said the head of the company.
At the same time he advised that RussNeft was no longer negotiating the purchase of Udmurtneft from TNK-BP, because the price of this stake was too high. “The payback time could be too long, it’s easier to invest in real estate, then the payback will come sooner,” said Gutseriev.
The head of RussNeft also informed that by the end of 2006 the oil production of the company is expected to reach 20 million tons a year with the existing oilfields, and in the future it will possibly come to 22 million tons.
RussNeft is a vertically integrated oil holding company ranking among the ten oil and gas majors of Russia. In the structure of RussNeft there are 30 upstream companies, 3 oil refineries, 2 transport companies and a retail network of 300 petrol stations. The enterprises of the company are found in 17 regions of Russia and CIS.
RussNeft operates in Western Siberia, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Ulyanovsk, Penza, Volgograd, Bryansk, Leningrad, Vologda, Smolensk, Saratov, Orenburg and Krasnodar regions, republics of Udmurtia, Komi and Belarus.
The total recoverable reserves of RussNeft exceed 630 million tons. The total annual oil output is 17 million tons.