(oilprice.com) Rosneft has denied reports that there were plans to consolidate the country’s biggest oil companies into one entity, the company said in a statement.
Rosneft cited an “unprecedented amount of coverage in foreign media alleging imminent consolidation of assets in the Russian oil industry with a direct hint on Rosneft’s intention to take over the main players in the domestic oil domain”, and went on to refer sarcastically to Igor Sechin’s “insidious intentions” of absorbing assets that Rosneft does not need.
The statement said those intentions, as originally reported by the Wall Street Journal, had nothing to do with reality or “any reasonable business logic” but were rather more likely a diversion tactic “to a false flag subject”.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that Russia may be considering the creation of a massive state oil company by combining current state assets Rosneft and Gazprom Neft, and private Lukoil. The WSJ cited unnamed individuals as sources of the information.
The report cited a Rosneft official as dismissing the information from the sources as false, saying that the report “may be aimed at creating competitive market advantages in the interests of other market participants.” A Lukoil spokesman told the Wall Street Journal that the company was not on merger negotiations “with any parties as this would not be in the interest of the company.”
Rosneft is Russia’s biggest oil company and one of the biggest globally. Before Aramco went public, Rosneft was the world’s biggest listed oil producer in terms of volumes, Reuters noted in a report on the latest news. The company’s output represents about 4% of the total global market.
Rosneft’s financial report for the first half of the year showed a 27% increase in profits to some $8.40 billion. The company also reported liquid hydrocarbon production of 92.8 million tons for the period.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
Brazil Energy Insight 
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