OREANDA-NEWS. November 30, 2012. ITERA Oil and Gas Company shall become a purely gas company, after it had sold Tverdilivskoye field and Pogromnenskoye field in the Orenburg Region, its remainder oil assets. TNK-BP will buy them. The transaction’s value is not disclosed. Experts assess its value at USD150-200 million. An agreement to sell the assets was reached before Rosneft which owned a 51 per cent stake with ITERA had made an agreement to buy a 100 per cent shareholding with TNK-BP and AAR Consortium, reported the press-centre of ITERA.   

ITERA Oil and Gas Company shall close the deal to sell its last oil assets to TNK-BP before this late November, - Vladimir Makeyev, General Director of the Company reported yesterday. ITERA plans to sell two fields in the Orenburg Region, namely Tverdilovskoye field and Pogromnenskoye field. The recoverable reserves of Tverdilovskoye field are assessed at 4.5 million tons of oil and 0.6 billion cubic meters of affiliated gas. Recoverable reserves of Pogromnenskoye field are assessed at 3.5 million tons of oil. The amount of the transaction is not disclosed, but Mr. Makeyev pointed out that ITERA was selling assets at a “good” price.

ITERA is one of the largest independent producers of natural gas in Russia. As early as in 2008, the Company stated it was not interested in the oil business any more. For this reason, the Company began selling its oil assets. ITERA made the first attempt to sell the fields in the Orenburg Region in 2008, but no applicants were found.

In January of last year ITERA once again announced the sale of Tverdilovskoye and Pogromnenskoye fields. The Federal Antimonopoly Service satisfied a motion by TNK-BP to buy a 100% shareholding with YupiterА (JupiterA) which owned a license for Tverdilovskoye field, this May. The sources of "Ъ" said then that TNK-BP was negotiating the purchase of Pogromnenskoye field, the second ITERA asset in the Orenburg Region. The “Ъ” source who is informed about the course of negotiations, reported yesterday that "the license for this field was also reregistered in favor of YupiterA, LLC, some time ago. At that, he specified that “this was one of the conditions to be met by ITERA to close the transaction".

TNK-BP considered a possibility of buying a 50% shareholding with ITERA in 2011. It revoked its application though in the end of 2011. As a result, ITERA had made a strategic cooperation agreement with Rosneft this February: the companies were going to explore and develop gas fields jointly in the territory of Russia.

Within the frameworks of that agreement ITERA Oil and Gas Company completed establishing a joint venture with Rosneft this August. Rosneft obtained a 51% block of shares in the authorized capital by investing a license on Kynsko-Chaselskoye field and making an additional payment of about USD 175 million. It was in the end of October that Rosneft announced a forthcoming purchase of a 100% shareholding with TNK-BP.

Rosneft is going to close the deal within a half a year period by paying shareholders of the company (AAR Consortium and BP) the total of USD 55 billion, out of which amount USD 45 billion in cash. Alexey Kokin of Uralsib evaluates the deal at USD 150-200 million provided that about 400 thousand tons of oil a year can be produced at the fields. The Orenburg Region is of strategic importance for TNK-BP, because a quarter of all production of the Company is located there, Denis Borisov of Nomos-bank pointes out. "The interest of the company to all offers related to the Orenburg Region is explained by the fact it has a well-developed transportation infrastructure, central oil treatment facility, oil pipelines and power transmission lines there", - he says.