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TNK-BP looking at BP's Vietnam assets
Russia's No.3 oil companyTNK-BP may try to buy Vietnamese assets from its co-owner BP asit sells down its portfolio to pay damages in the Gulf ofMexico, company executives said on Wednesday.
"It's not a secret that TNK-BP is looking at some of BPassets," Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Muir told the ReutersRussia Investment Summit.
TNK-BP, has already said it would be interested in buyingassets in Venezuela, where it has rights to develop part ofJunin-6 with a consortium of other Russian oil companies.
But company executives rejected the idea of buying BP'sshare of Alaska's Prudhoe Bay field. Newspapers have reported itmay be up for sale.
"We are looking for companies where the politics and ourexpertise are a good fit," chief operating officer Bill Schradertold the summit.
Russian companies regularly exploit Communist-era ties withVietnam in business.
Russia's Zarubezhneft, a state oil company is developingfields there and in the telecoms sector, a cellphone operatorwhich shares a shareholder with TNK-BP, Vimpelcom, recentlyexpanded there.
Schrader said it was firming up its production growthtargets for next year, aiming for a 1-2 percent range.Production growth was running ahead of target in 2010 at about2.8 percent, he said.
But production will start to shift more rapidly from the oldfields of west Siberia, which are declining at a rate of 2-3percent a year, toward the new oil provinces of east Siberia andthe Yamal peninsula in the far north.
"The low-hanging fruit has been achieved," Muir said.
West Siberia's share of output will decline to 75-80 percentof TNK-BP's output over the next 3-5 years as east Siberia,whose barrels are shipped to Asian customers through a newpipeline to the Pacific region, grows.
West Siberia could come under further pressure from proposedtax changes which increase the extraction tax on oil fromdeveloped fields. Pinched by transport tariff inflation andtaxes, Muir said, the company may need to cut investment in oldfields.
TNK-BP, which produces 12 bcm of gas, plans to more thandouble gas output over the next 6-8 years, making it Russia'sthird largest gas producer after Gazprom and Novatek, Schradersaid.
Its gas is sold exclusively to domestic customers by virtueof state controlled Gazprom's monopoly on the export pipeline.
"Our aim is to be number three and we have got the reservesto do it," Muir said.
reuters
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