Page 133 - RusRPTSept23

9.2 Major corporate news 9.2.1 Oil & gas corporate news
● Gazprom
RusKhimAlyans, a 50:50 joint venture between Russia’s state-owned Gazprom and a private firm called RusGazDobycha, has filed a RUB45.7bn ($472mn) lawsuit against Italy’s UniCredit over its failure to fulfil obligations as guarantor of the Ust-Luga LNG project because of sanctions. According to Russian court documents, seen by Reuters, the suit was filed at the court of arbitration of St Petersburg and the Leningrad region. No other details were disclosed and none of the companies involved have commented on the matter. RusKhimAlyans filed similar suits against Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank last month, with hearings due to take place in September and October respectively. Like UniCredit, they were among the guarantors of an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract that RusKhimAlyans had awarded to Germany’s Linde and Turkey’s Renaissance Heavy Industries in 2021.
● Rosneft
Rosneft ramped up natural gas production by 31.8% to 43.7bn cubic metres and topped the list of independent producers, the Russian oil and gas major reported. "Gas production by the company in the first half of 2023 surged by 31.8% against the first six months of 2022 and reached 1.5mn barrels of oil equivalent daily (43.7bn cubic metres)," Rosneft said. The increase of the indicator was driven by production scaled up in operating projects and by the launch of new gas project in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District in 2022. "The company demonstrated high growth dynamics of its operating indicators in the first half of 2023 amid successful implementation of current projects and launch of new ones. In particular, Rosneft reached the first place among independent gas producers, having boosted production by almost a third," Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin said. Rosneft lowered gas production by 8.7% quarter on quarter in the second quarter of this year to 1.4mn barrels of oil equivalent per day (21bn cubic metres), largely due to the restriction of oil production and workovers.
Rosneft has reported a substantial increase in net profit attributable to shareholders during the first half of 2023, demonstrating a rise of 45.2% compared to the same period in the previous year, reaching a total of 652bn rubles. This announcement was made by the company on August 30. Notably, net profit for the second quarter of this year also experienced growth of 1.9% in comparison to the first quarter, reaching 329bn rubles.
RUSSIA Country Report September 2023 www.intellinews.com