Russia's largest oil producer LUKOIL has filed a suit to push bankrupt oil firm Yukos out of a joint venture to develop the Caspian Sea shelf, it said on Tuesday.
LUKOIL said that if the suit was successful, it hoped to buy out the Yukos stake, estimated by analysts at $100 million. Both firms currently own 49.892 percent of the shares in the Caspian Oil Company, which is developing the North Caspian section of the shelf.
Kommersant business daily reported earlier that gas export monopoly Gazprom could buy the Yukos stake but LUKOIL spokesman Dmitry Dolgov said his company wanted to boost its own share in the joint venture to 99.8 percent.
"We filed the suit because Yukos is not able to finance the company in view of its bankruptcy, and we hope that its share will go over to LUKOIL," Dolgov said.
The remaining 0.216 percent of shares in the joint venture belongs to Gazprom.
Yukos was declared bankrupt in August and its assets, including several large refineries, oil firms and stakes in other companies, will be put up for sale within a year.
LUKOIL, in which US major ConocoPhillips has a 19 percent stake, announced in January it had discovered a large deposit in the northern part of the Caspian Sea, where it plans to produce more than five million tonnes (100,000 barrels per day) of oil per year. The company recently said it hopes to make other major discoveries in the area.
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