Russian oil major Yukos will have to cut crude oil output forecasts if it loses its next court case over a $3.4 billion tax bill, the firm's chief executive was quoted as saying on Thursday.
CEO Simon Kukes told the Wall Street Journal that defeat in the next appeal on June 18th would mean the company slipping closer to bankruptcy and having to slash its $1.9 billion capital spending programme.
"If on the 18th we lose in the worst possible fashion it will generate difficulties and things will accelerate," he was quoted as saying. "If the government wants to make Yukos bankrupt, they can make Yukos bankrupt. Period."
One of Russia's biggest companies, Yukos had become somewhat of a benchmark for transparent business practices in Russia, and had aggressively boosted crude output by investing heavily in new technologies.
Yukos has forecast crude production growth of 10 percent in 2004, but output was flat quarter-on-quarter in the first three months of the year - a fact also blamed on the tax dispute.
Yukos pumped 1.7 million barrels per day (bpd) in the first quarter, a 9.3 percent gain year-on-year. Main rival LUKOIL also produced 1.7 million bpd. Its Russian output grew by 13 percent.
Yukos lurched into crisis after the arrest of its politically ambitious chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky last October on charges of tax evasion and fraud.
His arrest sank Yukos's take-over of smaller rival Sibneft, and in December tax officials hit Yukos with a massive, $3.4 billion tax demand.
Kukes said that, given six to eight months and the reversal of a court order stopping the firm from selling assets and property, Yukos could raise $10 billion.
That would cover the current tax bill, which relates to the 2000 financial year, and other demands the company has said it expects to receive relating to other years.
On Thursday, corporate fixer Boris Jordan offered his services to the company's minority shareholders as a go-between after the firm said it could go under by the end of the year.
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