Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Khristenko announced last week that the government plans to begin selling oil export quotas next year at open auctions. The move is intended to crack down on the current system of allotting crucial access to export pipelines, which is an insiders?€™ game between corrupt bureaucrats and oil companies.
As world oil prices remain high and domestic oil firms send as much of their production abroad as they can, space in pipelines operated by state-owned monopoly Transneft is scarce.
If Khristenko prevails, it will become expensive as well.
However, TNK has to pay off loans provided by the Export-Import Bank of the United States and the Energy Ministry is proposing to provide it with guarantees for moving 4.8 million metric tons of export oil in the next 10 years.
TNK concluded two agreements in the fall for 10-year credits guaranteed by the U.S. Eximbank. The first loan, for more than $300 million, will be provided by Germany?€™s Commerzbank and used to develop the Samotlor deposit in western Siberia.
The second credit of $200 million is designated for revamping the Ryazan oil refinery and will be provided by Chase Manhattan Bank.
First Deputy Energy Minister Ivan Matlashov recently issued an order instructing officials in his ministry and the management department for the fuel and energy sector to grant TNK mandatory access to the export oil pipelines between 2001 and 2010 so that the company can pay off its Ex-Im loans for renovating Samotlor.
Matlashov refers in the letter to an agreement on credits to the oil and gas industry, signed in 1993 by the Energy Ministry, the Central Bank and Eximbank, under which the Eximbank?€™s loans were to be covered by oil exports.
At the same time Transneft was instructed to conclude a long-term agreement with TNK for transporting export oil in volumes necessary to fulfill the obligations to Eximbank. The letter says that these deliveries are to have priority over other export obligations of TNK or its subsidiaries.
Ivan Menshikov, TNK?€™s vice president for project finance, said the Energy Ministry?€™s letter did not stipulate that additional export volumes will be granted to TNK.
"It merely guarantees that we can export the quotas required to pay back the credit pursuant to the original schedule. This letter hedges the company?€™s and Eximbank?€™s risks against sudden changes in legislation or technical faults in the pipeline system," he said.
The Energy Ministry?€™s initiatives provoked suspicions in the government Tuesday.
"Matlashov?€™s letter is formulated in such a way that its meaning may be interpreted in various ways. In my opinion TNK could well use it to receive additional quotas," said a source in the government, who asked not to be named.
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