Russian companies OAO Gazprom, OOO Itera and Norilsk Nickel have all expressed interest in bidding for the assets of bankrupt oil company OAO Yukos, the spokesman for Yukos' receiver told Dow Jones Newswires Wednesday.
The assets, which include oil and gas production units and oil refineries, are to be liquidated over the next few months in a series of auctions.
The companies are the latest to join the race for the remains of Yukos, which was once among Russia's biggest oil companies. Russian authorities pushed Yukos into bankruptcy after hammering the company with tens of billions of dollars of back-tax claims - in what analysts saw as a political showdown between the Kremlin and Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Nikolai Lashkevich, spokesman for Yukos receiver Eduard Rebgun, said Gazprom, Itera and Norilsk had "expressed interest in a possible acquisition," but so far "haven't put in applications in the full sense."
U.S. oil major Chevron Corp. has also expressed interest in the liquidation sales, Lashkevich announced last week. Chevron said it wouldn't comment on potential mergers and acquisitions.
A spokesman for Russian natural gas company Itera said the company was "interested in acquiring oil and gas assets in general," and confirmed that it would look closely at the Yukos sales.
The spokesman said Itera might cooperate with Gazprom in the competition for assets, but that it has no plans to resell Yukos assets to Gazprom.
The idea that Itera or other companies might acquire Yukos units for resale to Gazprom has been raised by the Russian media. "Cooperation with Gazprom is possible," said the spokesman, Yevgeny Ostapov. "But Itera doesn't intend to buy assets for resale. That's not Itera's business."
Representatives of Norilsk Nickel, the world's biggest nickel producer, and Gazprom, the world's biggest producer of natural gas, said they couldn't immediately comment.
Gazprom is widely believed to have the inside track in any sale of Yukos assets, along with state-controlled OAO Rosneft , thanks to their close ties to the Kremlin.
Analysts have said they think foreign firms' best chance of picking up Yukos assets would be as minority partners with Gazprom, Rosneft or another Russian company with good relations with the state.
Italian energy firms Eni SpA and Enel SpA have already applied for permission to bid for Yukos assets with a Russian partner, ESN Group. ESN Group has worked closely with Gazprom in the past. Analysts have speculated that ESN or Itera may in fact be proxy bidders for Gazprom.
Gazprom last week said it was aware that certain large U.S. energy companies were showing an interest in Yukos assets. However it hadn't received any proposals from U.S. players for a joint bid with Gazprom, it added later.
(Dow Jones Newswires, 14/02/2007)