PRESS: Trafigura may buy 49% in Rosneft’s Rospan for $4 bln

MOSCOW, Dec 24 (PRIME) -- Russian oil major Rosneft has offered 49% in its natural gas project Rospan International to commodity trader Trafigura for U.S. $4 billion, Vedomosti business daily reported on Monday quoting sources.

Rosneft and Trafigura declined to comment.

Rosneft and Trafigura launched preparations to the deal this summer, but suspended them in November due to contraction of oil prices. Some sources told Vedomosti that Trafigura was to take out a loan in a Russian bank secured by shares in Rospan in order to pay for the deal.

Rospan unites several oil and gas fields with combined reserves of 878 billion cubic meters of gas and 191 million tonnes of oil and condensate. Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin said previously that Rospan will produce 20 billion cubic meters of gas in 2019.

Vasily Tanurkov, an analyst at the Analytical Credit Rating Agency (ACRA), said that even an optimistic estimate of Rospan’s value would amount to $5 billion, so it would be a great deal for Rosneft to sell 49% in the project for $4 billion. Still, the nature of Trafigura’s interest in the project is unclear, as it would be tough to monetize the project’s gas taking into account that only gas giant Gazprom is allowed to export natural gas.

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