Russia's largest oil firm, Rosneft, plans to boost its oil output by almost 60 percent in seven years with growth powered by assets acquired from bankrupt company YUKOS, its president Sergei Bogdanchikov said on November 12.
Bogdanchikov told Reuters that state-controlled Rosneft expected to produce 3.2 million barrels of crude per day by 2015 compared with the 2.02 million bpd forecast this year, already a 24.5 percent hike from 2006.
"By 2015 we plan oil production at 160 million tonnes per year (3.2 million barrels per day), this figure is being discussed in the framework of the company's strategy to 2020," said in an interview during the World Energy Congress in Rome.
Rosneft became Russia's largest oil producer and refiner earlier this year when it bought most of the assets of former rival YUKOS, bankrupted by over $30 billion in back tax claims.
The assets, which included five refineries, increased Rosneft's once tiny refining capacity of 221,000 bpd almost fivefold to more than 1 million bpd, and the firm plans further expansion, Bogdanchikov said.
"We have refining capacity of 50 million tonnes per year (1 million bpd) now and plan to increase it to 90 million bpd (1.8 million bpd) after we finish modernisation of our Tuapse refinery and build a new plant at the Far East," he said.
Rosneft met little competition when the state auctioned off the assets of YUKOS, once Russia's biggest oil company. Analysts have said the acquisitions were facilitated by Rosneft's links to the Kremlin, where company chairman Igor Sechin is also President Vladimir Putin's deputy chief of staff.
Bogdanchikov said Rosneft still hoped to issue Eurobonds to help refinance its borrowing of $24.6 billion made to swallow YUKOS. Rosneft had planned the issue earlier this year, but postponed it due to market volatility.
"We think we still have chance to do it this year," he said, adding that the volume of the issue might be around $2 billion, with a maturity of 5-10 years, depending on market conditions.
Chief Financial Officer Peter O'Brien told Reuters in September the company had refinanced around a half of the debt and planned to refinance much of the remaining $11 billion by the end of this year.
Rosneft has said it plans to have a one-to-one ratio between its debt and earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) by the end of 2010.
When the debts are repaid Rosneft is ready to continue acquisitions to realise its goal of challenging the world's biggest oil firms.
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