Russian state-controlled oil firm Rosneft, which last week became Russia's top oil producer, won an auction for part of its bankrupt rival Yukos to become the country's top refiner as well. Rosneft won the auction for Yukos's assets in the Samara region with a bid of 165.53 billion roubles ($6.4 billion).
The lot, which had a starting price of 154.1 billion roubles, comprises some of Yukos' most attractive assets, including three refineries with total processing capacity of 400,000 barrels per day and a 200,000 bpd oil production unit.
"The acquisition ... will accelerate improvements in the company's operational and financial performance via improved vertical integration, resulting earnings growth particularly from the attractive downstream market in Russia, and benefits of scale," Rosneft said in a statement.
Rosneft beat the only other bidder, a company called Versar, to clinch its expected purchase of the assets. Versar was not widely known until it bid unsuccessfully in a previous Yukos auction for the firm's electricity assets.
The break-up of Yukos has hugely benefited Rosneft, which is a Yukos creditor as well as a buyer of its assets, and it had already moved in on the Samara group of refineries, which were only processing Yukos and Rosneft oil.
A minor player just three years ago, Rosneft is now Russia's top oil producer and its once puny refining capacity has grown to more than 1 million bpd, outpacing the previous leader LUKOIL which has 780,000 bpd of processing capacity.
The addition of Samaraneftegas also adds 947 million barrels of oil equivalent to Rosneft's proved reserves, bolstering its claim to have more oil than any other publicly traded company.
The purchase of Samaraneftegas also further confirms Rosneft as Russia's top oil producer bringing its total production capacity to 2.1 million bpd, excluding gas output. By comparison, the US's third largest oil major ConocoPhillips produces around 2.5 million barrels of oil equivalent a day including gas.
Analysts were unmoved by the long-expected purchase which was already largely priced in to Rosneft's shares, around 15 percent of which are publicly owned. The sale of Samaraneftegas and the Syzran, Kuibyshev and Novokuibyshev refineries, was followed by the auction of Yukos's network of over 537 filling stations on Thursday, which was won by a little-known firm called Yunitex.
The mystery winner outbid Royal Dutch Shell and BP's Russian venture TNK-BP paying $484 million for the lot or 62 percent above the starting price. The sales on Thursday leaves Yukos little more than a hollow shell: its headquarters and a few minor assets.
The Moscow headquarters building will go on sale on Friday and Rosneft could bid. Capturing Yukos's head office would symbolise total victory of the Kremlin-backed firm over Yukos, once Russia's top blue chip stock. Yukos's shareholders say the Kremlin deliberately destroyed their company and jailed chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky to punish him for harbouring independent political ambitions.
The series of Yukos sales over the last two months has winnowed out the firm and poured billions of dollars into the receiver's hands. Almost all of it will go to the tax office or to Rosneft.
"According to a preliminary calculation, more than 690 billion roubles have so far been received," Nikolai Lashkevich, a spokesman for Yukos's receiver, told reporters at the auction.
"Considering the total Yukos debt is 709 billion roubles and the two next auctions today and tomorrow are valued at around 30 billion roubles, it can be confidently predicted that all the creditors' demands will be met in full." Any surplus would go towards the company's current expenses and other costs, he said.