LONDON/MOSCOW, June 10 (Reuters) – A vehicle to reinvest
nearly $14 billion earned by two Russian billionaires from their
stake in TNK-BP will be headed by Jonathan Muir, who as the oil
venture’s finance chief managed billions in dividend flows,
three sources said.

Soviet-born tycoons Mikhail Fridman and German Khan,
together with associates from their Alfa Group consortium, want
to plough their proceeds from the sale of TNK-BP, a partnership
with BP, into international oil and telecoms.

MOSCOW/LONDON (Reuters) – Russia’s Rosneft (ROSN.MM: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is under no pressure to sell assets to fund debt repayments and will decide how to streamline its business once cost savings from a takeover of rival TNK-BP become clear, its finance chief said on Monday.

Announcing Rosneft’s (ROSN.MM: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) $55 billion takeover of rival TNK-BP last year, Chief Executive Igor Sechin said the state-controlled oil major would look to sell non-core and less profitable assets.

LONDON/MOSCOW, May 31 (Reuters) – Banks that helped Russian
oil company Rosneft finance its $55 billion buyout of
rival TNK-BP have been left waiting for their payback – a share
in $15 billion in asset sales expected to follow the deal,
sources familiar with matter said.

State oil company Rosneft’s takeover of TNK-BP this year
aimed to create a major oil group producing more oil than Exxon
Mobil, but it also tightened the Russian government’s
grip on the country’s energy sector.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s state-controlled oil company Rosneft (ROSN.MM: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is planning to take over local gas firm Itera for $3 billion, two sources close to Rosneft said on Tuesday, strengthening its hand in challenging Gazprom’s (GAZP.MM: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) industry dominance.

Rosneft already owns a 51 percent stake in Itera, which was the top gas supplier to the former Soviet Union republics in the 1990s before Gazprom secured a monopoly on Russian gas exports in 2006, and has now approved the purchase of the remaining 49 percent of Itera for around $3 billion, the sources said.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Some of the world’s biggest fortunes were made and lost when the fall of the Soviet Union threw together a motley gang of brash young tycoons, hard-bitten oilmen and KGB veterans to scrabble for riches amidst the rubble of the Soviet oil industry.

“The iron curtain did not go down, Russians like to say, it went up,” says Georgetown professor Thane Gustafson in “Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia”, a drama of chance and personality which ultimately determined the fate of Russia’s oil.

MOSCOW, April 18 (Reuters) – Some of the world’s biggest
fortunes were made and lost when the fall of the Soviet Union
threw together a motley gang of brash young tycoons, hard-bitten
oilmen and KGB veterans to scrabble for riches amidst the rubble
of the Soviet oil industry.

“The iron curtain did not go down, Russians like to say, it
went up,” says Georgetown professor Thane Gustafson in “Wheel of
Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia”, a drama of
chance and personality which ultimately determined the fate of
Russia’s oil.

TYUMEN, Russia (Reuters) – Forty-five years after its accidental discovery deep under the swamps of West Siberia, the race is now on to develop the world’s largest shale oil resource, Russia’s Bazhenov.

A drilling push begins in earnest this spring, spurred by President Vladimir Putin’s promise to loosen the Kremlin’s grip on proceeds from its natural resources in hopes of sparking a shale revolution aimed as much at remaking Russia’s oil industry as at raising output.

TYUMEN, Russia, April 3 (Reuters) – Forty-five years after
its accidental discovery deep under the swamps of West Siberia,
the race is now on to develop the world’s largest shale oil
resource, Russia’s Bazhenov.

A drilling push begins in earnest this spring, spurred by
President Vladimir Putin’s promise to loosen the Kremlin’s grip
on proceeds from its natural resources in hopes of sparking a
shale revolution aimed as much at remaking Russia’s oil industry
as at raising output.

MOSCOW, March 25 (Reuters) – China has accepted an olive
branch from Russia’s Gazprom after years of tough
talks which had failed to yield a deal on gas supplies, though
the main point of conflict – price – remains.

Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) agreed on
Friday night that 38 billion cubic metres per year of Russian
gas would flow to China starting in 2018 and come only from
Russia’s East Siberian fields, rather than the West Siberian
fields which also supply Europe.

MOSCOW/BEIJING, March 22 (Reuters) – A hardball game on
price may leave Russia empty-handed after 15 years of talks on a
deal to supply China with gas, with Beijing able to shop around
thanks to a wider choice of suppliers.

As China’s new President Xi Jinping meets Russian President
Vladimir Putin, prospects are dim for substantial progress on a
deal between the world’s largest conventional gas producer and
its fastest growing energy consumer.