Analytics // Companies

Integra Group (LSE: INTE), a leading independent provider of diversified oilfield services, and VTB Bank (Deutschland) AG increased their existing term loan facility with permitted reborrowings from US$50 million to US$100 million and extended the tenor by 5 years. Furthermore, the company benefits from improved pricing terms.

The Gazprom’s subsidiary builds up Sochi with luxury hotels. Neftegaz.RU journalists were informed that Gazprom will put in commission a luxury village in Krasnaya Polyana, which is near to the site of the Olympic Games 2014, approximately by this November.

As we consider, in 2008 preferred shares of Transneft can become a profitable investment. The average prognosis of the leading world and Russian analysis agencies concerning the potential growth of the shares accounts to 11.4%.

Is it the end of the era of "oligarch capitalism," or rather a maneuver by Russia's bureaucratic elite to tighten their hold over a system that has served them well? The jury is still out on what the jailing of oil chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky means for Russia.

The forcible actions taken against the YUKOS company, which was already preparing to join the ranks of transnational corporations, cannot fail to shock Western society. Senior executives of a large company - a company the West had been accustomed to consider a model of new, civilized ways of doing business in Putin's Russia - have suddenly been sent to the Matrosskaya Tishina prison.

The affair about Yukos and its owners widened last Friday. It seems that the Russian prosecutor office is hunting down on each of the six billionaires whose fortune is connected to Russia?s biggest oil company.

Last week, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of Yukos, announced that his company will become the first Russian company which will be transformed into a truly international major. All of Yuko?s activities are now being directed towards this goal.

The situation in Myanmar, ex Burma, has come on focus again as the heads of the Californian and New York pension systems have asked the US oil company Unocal to withdraw from a pipeline project in Myanmar.

On Friday, British Petrol, together with the Russian Alfa Group and Access-Renova (AAR) finalized the largest transaction in Russian corporate history by combining the Russian assets oil assets of BP and AAR in order to create a new oil and gas giant.

The business community cheered after the Russian Anti-Monopoly Ministry gave its approval for the Yukos-Sibneft merger, despite ongoing investigations in Yukos? business transactions in the 90?s. The merger will create on oil giant which controls almost 30 percent of the Russian oil production and pumps 2.

A recent study by the consulting group Wood Mackenzie Ltd, called ?Value Creation through Exploration? tried to analyze the international upstream performance of oil companies by applying a broad rang of measures.

The ongoing conflict of the Russian government and the Russian business community raises the question of the economic course of the country. Until yesterday Russia was ?quite a safe country?in the opinion of the world community.

Last Wednesday, Platon Lebedev a close ally of Yukos owner Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested and charged with defrauding the state of $280 million in 1994. He was taken in custody out of his hospital bed where he was recovering from a heart attack.

The Russian oil giants have been partly catching up with their Western competitors, at least what the reserves of oil equivalents are concerned. The new created company, after the merger of Yukos and Sibneft, possesses 19.

Earlier this year, BP decided to offer $6.75 billion in cash and shares to Alfa and Access/Renova, owner of Tyumen Oil Co. (TNK) to merger their assets with BP?s part in Sidanco in order to create Russia?s third largest oil group.

At the end of last year, Transneft, Russia?s pipeline monopoly stopped exporting oil through the Latvian port of Ventspils, which is the largest terminal in the Baltics with a 2001 profit of $ 42.8 million.

Surgut Neftegaz is the fourth largest oil company in Russia. Its activities include prospecting, gas- and oil field construction and development, as well as oil, gas and petrochemical production. Until now, Surgut has succeeded in shielding itself from all developments in the corporate world of the Russian oil giants.

Market speculations were confirmed as Yukos and Sibneft announced their merger on Tuesday, creating a mayor global oil producing company. Yuko?s shareholder will control over 70 % of the new company.

YUKOS aspires staking out the perspective Chinese market while high prices for petroleum allow using expensive rail transportation. Deliveries of petroleum to China by rail, according to analysts, are twice more expensive for the companies than through pipes.

"Rosneft" is going to optimize its corporate structure, therefore the state company plans to sell and liquidate some of its non-profile enterprises, where it has shares. The purpose of the action is to increase the economic efficiency of long-term financial investments, the efficiency of the company?s functioning property complex and also the reduction of unproductive expenses.