CNOOC interests in Russian oil group's assets
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-12-08 15:16

YUKOS had said it hoped to liquidate its international assets before the end of 2006 and use them to clear its outstanding tax and creditor obligations.

In February, Russian officials said China had lent Russia $6 billion to help the Kremlin renationalise YUKOS's main asset, million-barrel-per-day production unit Yuganskneftegaz, after the embattled company was forced to sell Yuganskneftegaz to state oil firm Rosneft in December 2004 to pay part of $27.5 billion in back taxes owed to the Russian government.

There have been subsequent reports that Chinese state oil firm CNPC was interested in buying a stake in Yuganskneftegaz.

YUKOS founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky received an eight-year prison sentence in a Siberian penal colony for fraud and tax evasion. But critics of Russia's government said the tax bill was imposed on YUKOS in a move to destroy the empire of the politically ambitious Khodorkovsky, and to regain control over the strategic oil sector it lost in the chaotic privatisations of the mid-1990s.

YUKOS's foreign assets include Lithuanian refiner Mazeikiu Nafta and Slovakian pipeline operator Transpetrol. YUKOS wants to sell its 53.7 percent stake in Mazeikiu Nafta, the Baltic region's only refinery.

Analysts have said four parties, including BP's Russian unit, TNK-BP, placed bids for the assets, and that a joint bid by LUKOIL and U.S. group ConocoPhillips are frontrunners.

But on Nov. 26, Lithuania's Economy Minister Kestutis Dauksys told Lithuanian state radio that the two Russian oil companies were off the list.