Page 15 - FSUOGM Week 23

FSUOGM PROJECTS & COMPANIES FSUOGM
SOCAR readies for Russian refining foray
RUSSIA
AZERI state oil company SOCAR is making a push into Russian re ning, with plans to snap up a stake in the country’s biggest independent processing plant.
The 180,000 bpd Antipinsky refinery for- merly belonged to New Stream Group (NSG), owned by Russian businessman Dmitry Mazurov. NSG was forced to relinquish control over the asset to Sberbank in May, however, over a reported US$3 billion debt pile.
e bank announced on June 5 that a joint venture it had formed with unnamed inves- tors had acquired the 80% stake in the Antip- insky plant previously held by NSG. is JV is called SOCAR Energoresurs, although the bank’s statement suggested that SOCAR was not yet involved in the company, but might join a er conducting an audit of the re nery’s assets.
According to Interfax’s SPARK data- base, SOCAR Energoresurs is controlled by a Cyprus-registered company called SOCAR Russia Investment and a Sberbank unit known as SBK Komplekt. SOCAR Russia Investment has an unidenti ed majority shareholder registered in the British Virgin Islands, while a 20% stake is held by Farid Jafarov, the general manager of one of SOCAR’s petrochemical divisions, SOCAR Polymer.
Assuming its investment in the Antipinsky plant’s operating company is nalised, SOCAR would also gain control of several undeveloped
oil elds in the Orenburg region with an esti- mated 45.5 million tonnes (333.5 million barrels) in C1+C2 oil resources.
e Antpinsky re nery began encountering serious di culties last year, as a result of weak- ened re ning margins in Russia partly caused by changes in taxation that have driven up the domestic cost of crude oil. The plant started struggling to pay for oil supplies towards the end of the last year and was forced to halt operations altogether last month.
SOCAR is reportedly planning to reach out to Lukoil and Surgutne egas, two of Russia’s big- gest independent oil producers, to obtain feed- stock to bring production back online. Under the terms of its planned purchase, SOCAR will not assume any of the re nery’s debts but may be required to invest in the facility’s modernisation, market sources have told FSU OGM.
SOCAR currently does not have any large- scale assets in Russia, with its business in the country confined to a small-scale oil trading operation. It operates two other oil re neries – the 130,000 bpd Heydar Aliyev plant in Azer- baijan and the 200,000 bpd STAR complex in Turkey. e latter was completed last year at a cost of more than US$6 billion.
While SOCAR Energoresurs has 80% of the Antipinsky plant, the remaining 20% is report- edly held by an in uential Russian lawyer called Nikolai Yegorov, a former class mate of Russian President Vladimir Putin.™
Week 23 12•June•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P15