Page 14 - FSUOGM Week 23 2021

FSUOGM PROJECTS & COMPANIES FSUOGM

Rosneft ally launches lawsuit

against RBC

RUSSIA NEFTEGAZHOLDING, the well-connected Rosneft has a long history of suing newspa-
oil producer owned by former Rosneft president pers for defamation. In 2016 it demanded that
The company cites Eduard Khudainatov, has filed a $6.8mn lawsuit RBC retract an article about the company and
reputational damage in against Moscow-based news agency RBC over compensate it RUB3bn in damages, although the
seeking $6.8mn. a December report about its business dealings court in that instance only ruled in favour of the
with Rosneft. retraction.
RBC reported in December 2020 that Ros- It launched another RUB43bn ($0.6bn) def-
neft planned to sell stakes in six of its oil sub- amation case against RBC, over an article that
sidiaries to Neftegazholding, while acquiring claimed that one of Rosneft’s security arms had
the latter’s Payakha fields in north Russia, set to received a stake in its Venezuelan projects, which
serve a central role in Rosneft’s Vostok Oil pro- it had previously reported selling. It offloaded its
ject. Nefteogaz claims the article caused reputa- Venezuelan operations in the hope of getting
tional damage to its business and was seeking US sanctions lifted that had been imposed on
RUB500mn ($6.8mn), RBC reported on June 3. two subsidiaries caught trading Venezuelan
According to the news agency, the oil producer oil. Rosneft later withdrew that suit after RBC
did not provide justification for why it was seek- apologised.
ing this specific amount. Rosneft was reported in March to have filed
“We are confident in the reliability and objec- lawsuits against RBC and fellow Russian news
tivity of the information we publish,” the head of outlets Novaya Gazeta and IStories, as well as US
RBC’s editorial board, Petr Kanayev, said. media group Bloomberg, although the reasons at
The case will be heard at the Moscow Arbi- that time were unknown.
tration Court. Rosneft’s Vostok Oil, situated on the north-
RBC said it had based its report on state- ern Taymyr Peninsula, contains an estimated
ments by top managers at Rosneft, including its 6bn tonnes (44bn barrels) of liquid hydrocar-
first vice-president Didier Casimiro, as well as bon reserves and considerable gas resources.
information provided by its press statement and The company has said the project could flow
sources close to the business transactions. over 2mn bpd of oil and up to 50mn tpy of LNG.
Rosneft later confirmed in its 2020 report Rosneft said on June 3 it had brought in Rus-
that it had bought the Payakha field for $9.6bn. It sian power group InterRAO for design and sur-
also said it had entered into deals to sell interests vey work for an 867-MW gas-fired power plant
in a number of assets, including Vareganneft- to supply electricity to Vostok Oil facilities. The
egaz, Severvarganskoye, Nizhnevartovskoye, agreement, signed at the St Petersburg Interna-
RN-Sakhalinmorneftegaz and RN-Severnaya tional Economic Forum (SPIEF), also covers a
Neft. Combined, Neftegazholding is expected to 110-kV transmission line and a second 214-MW
net 10-13mn tonnes per year (200,000-260,000 power plant in Sever Bay, where Rosneft intends
barrels per day) from the asset interests, accord- to build an oil terminal to ship Vostok Oil’s sup-
ing to Rosneft. plies to market.™

P14 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 23 09•June•2021