Russian oil company OAO Rosneft announced today that it has acquired Baikal Finance Group, the purchaser of OAO Yukos‘ main production unit Yuganskneftegaz (“Yugansk”) at a Russian government auction last Sunday. Here are the earlier posts covering the auction and the Yukos chapter 11 case.
The Russian government controls Rosneft, so the company’s acquisition of the Yugansk unit gives the Russian government effective control over a substantial portion of the Russian oil and gas industry. Yukos believes that the Rosneft acquisition is preliminary to the ultimate transfer of the Yugansk unit to Russian government-controlled OAO Gazprom. Gazprom was expected to be the primary bidder at the auction until the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston issued a TRO late last Thursday in Yukos’ chapter 11 case that chilled Western financial institutions that were scheduled to provide financing for Gazprom’s bid. When Gazprom could not finance its anticpated bid for Yugansk, Baikal Finance stepped into the breach and emerged on Sunday as the winning bidder at the auction by posting a $9.37 billion bid.
Gazprom and Rosneft announced a merger this past September, and many analysts of the Russian economy expect that the Russian government will use Gazprom as the vehicle to create Russia’s major oil and gas company. Before Gazprom’s bid was undermined by the TRO, Rosneft was expected to become part of Gazprom’s new oil subsidiary — OOO Gazpromneft — and Yugansk was to be merged into that unit.
Adding to the quickly changing events of the past week, Gazprom earlier this week announced that it had sold the Gazpromneft unit last Friday to an unidentified buyer for an undisclosed sum. Gazpromneft took part in the auction on Sunday, but did not bid.
Meanwhile, Yukos announced in a Bankruptcy Court hearing in Houston on Wednesday that it is preparing a massive lawsuit against all parties that participated in the auction in violation of the Bankruptcy Court’s TRO. In that regard, Yukos accused Gazprom of violating the Bankruptcy Court’s TRO by participating — although not bidding — in the auction of the Yugansk unit.
In rattling this litigation saber, Yukos is clearly signaling that it will attempt to put the assets of Gazprom and any Western financial institution that participated in the auction at risk. In so doing, Yukos is attempting to gain some leverage in its battle with the Russian government by chilling the market for Western financing of the Russian companies’ oil and gas ventures. It is a creative strategy, but it is far too early to predict whether it will have any meaningful impact on the Russian government’s conduct toward Yukos and the rest of the Russian oil and gas industry.