TNK-BP Intending to Achieve 100% Reserve Recovery
15 Apr 2004
The Russo-British TNK-BP is going to recover at least 100% of reserves, said Mr. Victor Vekselberg, member of the Board of Directors and Managing Director, Production and Technologies, TNK-BP. In his words, "reserve audit and reserve to output ratio are becoming the top priority for us." "In past years, we recovered on average of 30%-50% of depleted reserves considering that our reserves are high enough. Whereas BP proposed, and we agreed, to recover at least 100%. That is to say, one should record on the balance sheet the as many new reserves as old reserves extracted," Mr. Vekselberg pointed out in his interview to Vedomosti published on April 14. He noted that boosting assets used to be the foremost objective for TNK-BP, but "the company is among the world's ten majors and so it should revise its priorities." "But this does not mean that we will stop to develop new projects," Mr. Vekselberg added. This year, TNK-BP will get down to aggressive development of the Uvat group of deposits. Mr. Vekselberg did not rule it out that TNK-BP would acquire assets in the regions the company used to be interested in, for instance, in the Timano Pechora basin. In addition, TNK-BP intends to get back to the agreement reached with BP when the company was established concerning possible incorporation of Sakhalin projects that are jointly managed by BP and Rosneft into the consolidated company. Mr. Vekselberg also informed that the split-off of Slavneft held by TNK-BP on a parity basis with Sibneft is delayed by the situation in which former shareholders of Sibneft found themselves in connection with YUKOS Oil Company. When asked about the possibility of repurchasing Sibneft's share in Slavneft from Sibneft, Mr. Vekselberg said the parties failed to agree upon repurchase yet. "I guess this is a very complex matter. It is not that our partners refuse to sell - of course, they may agreed to some aerial price. But we are not prepared to offer anything like that," he said. Mr. Vekselberg also said that TNK-BP was keen on purchasing gas assets in Russia, while pointing out that the gas market was still very narrow in this country, so any transactions on it can hardly be planned. Meanwhile, he singled out three lines of TNK-BP's gas business development: associated gas, natural gas output at Rospan (held by TNK-BP jointly with YUKOS) as well as development of the Kovykta gas and condensate field, Irkutsk Region, with gas reserves at 1.9 trillion cm of gas. Mr. Vekselberg expressed confidence that, by this summer, TNK-BP would manage to structure its relations with Gazprom. "It cannot be excluded that configuration of agreements will not be as banal as Gazprom's participation in the capital stock of RUSIA Petroleum (holds the license for Kovykta. - ANI), but this is a secondary issue," he said. Touching upon the issue of settlements with TNK-BP's minority shareholders and shifting to the single share, Mr. Vekselberg expressed the opinion that this procedure will take two years at best. Source INTERFAX
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