Word: conoco
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...with a $2 billion bid, the U.S. firm ConocoPhillips had just won an auction for the Russian government's 7.6% stake in the firm. The two companies promptly announced a strategic alliance to develop oil reserves in the Russian Arctic and potentially work together in Iraq. For Jim Mulva, Conoco's president and chief executive, the deal amounted to a coup, giving Conoco access to 8 billion bbl. of proven oil reserves at relatively modest cost. Lukoil was delighted too because it is counting on the Americans to help it extract and market the oil more efficiently. But as Mulva...
...called a shareholder vote for December to decide whether to file for bankruptcy protection; a principal reason it hasn't already done so is that a majority of board members believe it would be impossible to find a Russian court willing to approve the petition. Indeed, the day before Conoco signed the Lukoil deal, the Moscow court where Khodorkovsky is on trial refused to allow a former German Justice Minister serving as an official European human-rights representative to speak with him. The Yukos case "has set the Russian judicial system back a decade," says Sarah Carey, a Washington lawyer...
...companies are piling in. In addition to the Conoco deal, Britain's BP is investing a whopping $7 billion in a joint venture that controls huge fields in western Siberia, and in September France's Total agreed to pay $1 billion for a 25% stake in Novatek, Russia's largest private gas producer. Many other companies, including ChevronTexaco, PetroCanada and Norway's Statoil, are trying to get a foothold. All three recently signed preliminary agreements to work with state-controlled Gazprom, an oil-and-gas behemoth in which Germany power company E.On holds a 6% stake. There is widespread speculation...
...specialists say, the pendulum has swung the other way. That doesn't mean the central government wants to nationalize all energy assets, but it has put an end to generous tax breaks and has introduced other limitations on the private sector, particularly foreign companies. Under the terms of the Conoco deal, for example, the American company can raise its stake in Lukoil--but only to a ceiling of 20%. That's less than the 25% it needs to be able to block strategic company decisions. BP, by contrast, whose contract was signed eight months before Khodorkovsky's arrest...
...local firms had neither the technology nor the money to develop. Kazakhstan turned to Western companies for help, and firms like Chevron and Mobil moved in. When the Kashagan field was discovered in 2000, the government invited BG to form a consortium with Eni, Royal Dutch/ Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, Conoco-Phillips and Inpex of Japan to exploit it. That was no easy task. In winter, the shallow waters of this part of the Caspian turn into ice floes that - carried by high winds - can crush conventional offshore rigs. So Agip, the operating arm of Italy's ENI charged with developing...