Rosneft is to buy a $1.8billion stake in a Siberian venture from Italy’s Enel it seeks a greater share of Russia’s natural-gas market.
The Russian state-run oil producer will take a 19.6 percent stake in SeverEnergia, which produces gas in western Siberia. Gazprom and Novatek own 51 percent of the project, with Italy’s Eni SpA and Enel holding the remainder.
The acquisition moves Rosneft closer to a goal of boosting natural gas output to 100 billion cubic meters by 2020, which would make Rosneft the largest Russian supplier behind Gazprom.
“SeverEnergia is really a transformative asset for all the partners involved,” Oleg Maximov, an oil and gas analyst at Sberbank CIB in Moscow. “We think that Rosneft got a very good deal out of this.”
SeverEnergia has the potential to produce 35 billion cubic meters of gas a year, according to a Novatek presentation made last month. It may also pump out 6.5 million metric tons of gas condensate, which is similar to light crude oil.
Enel and Eni bought the company during the liquidation of bankrupt Yukos Oil Co. in 2007, the only international energy firms to buy assets in the auctions. Gazprom, the world’s largest gas producer, later bought a 51 percent share, which it sold to Novatek and its liquids arm, Gazprom Neft.
“Gas business is one of the company’s strategic development priorities,” Sechin said in today’s statement.
The deal is the latest in a string of acquisitions for Rosneft, which agreed to take full control of gas producer NGK Itera for $2.9billion in July this year, as well as buying the TNK-BP oil venture for more than $50billion from BP and its partners in March.
Rosneft has about $71billion in debt, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, largely as a result of the TNK-BP transaction.
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