Russia's top oil exporter, Yukos, slid closer to collapse after it lost its main production unit to a mystery buyer in a forced auction and acknowledged on Monday that its crude shipments were slowing. Yukos Chief Executive Stephen Theede said the firm would take no steps to turn over control of its Yuganskneftegaz operation until the full identity of the buyer, Baikal Finance Group, was revealed.
"Unfortunately as a result of the auction that took place yesterday, an irreversible act has taken place here," Theede told reporters in London.
But he said a carve-out of the 1.7 million-barrel-a-day unit would take weeks if not months and that in the meantime it was "business as usual" at Yugansk. Sunday's sale by government auction of Yugansk is the culmination of a Kremlin campaign to crush Yukos' politically ambitious principal owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and seize control of strategic sectors of the economy sold off in the chaotic privatisations of the 1990s.
"Russia is sliding towards being un-investable. The whole thing is very sad," said Martin Taylor, hedge fund manager at London-based Thames River capital running $5.5 billion assets. "In the 1990s, Russian stocks traded at low valuations because everyone was worried about being robbed by the oligarchs. Now everyone is worried about being robbed by the government," Taylor told Reuters.
Oil traders said Yukos defaulted on two December Urals cargoes scheduled to load from the Baltic port of Primorsk after failing to pay export duties and fees.
Theede, speaking from self-imposed exile, said the company could not keep producing oil without cash which tax authorities have been seizing as part of a Kremlin-inspired campaign to shatter the company.
Analysts speculated Baikal's auction win on Sunday may be a way of circumventing a US bankruptcy court ruling.
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