On September 8 in Berlin, Rosneft and Rosneftegaz (the company which owns 100% of Rosneft on behalf of the State) entered into an agreement with ABN Amro Bank, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley on the granting of a syndicated loan in the amount of 7.5 billion dollars. According to the documents signed, these financial institutions guarantee the largest loan ever granted to a Russian borrower.

The loan will be transferred in full by the end of 2005.

The deal will allow the state to implement Rosneft and Gazprom projects aimed at increasing both companies’ capital and a corresponding growth in the value of their state-owned assets.

Rosneft and Rosneftegaz have also reached agreement with the group of banks on cooperation in preparing Rosneft for its transformation into a public company.

The signature ceremony was timed to coincide with President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Germany.

The signature of the documents on the largest loan in modern Russian history provides further confirmation that foreign investors are increasingly interested in Russia, and that they feel confident about the progressive growth of the Russian economy as a whole, and the oil-and-gas industry in particular.

After the documents were signed, the head of Rosneft Sergei Bogdanchikov stated that Germany was a traditional partner of his company, and noted that Rosneft supplies oil to Germany ‘in significant volumes’.

Speaking to Russian journalists, he said that Rosneft’s strategy was to reach oil production levels of over 100 million tons a year, an increase of some 30% over the next 5 years. The amount of oil delivered to ‘the European market as a whole and naturally to the German market’ will increase correspondingly.

Bogdanchikov declined to comment on the possible future integration of Rosneft and Gazprom into a huge joint corporation. ‘That falls under the competence of the owner, namely the Russian Federation and its government,’ he said.

In his words, the government had in the past managed to dispose of its assets ‘carefully and efficiently’. ‘Let’s hope it will continue to do so in the future,’ Bogdanchikov concluded.

The head of Rosneft told journalists about the agreement between Rosneft and Rosneftegaz and the group of Western banks, and stressed that this – the largest loan in the modern Russian history – was evidence of the fact that investors ‘believe in the progressive growth of the Russian economy, the development of its energy sector, and particularly its oil-and-gas industry, as well as the economic reforms successfully implemented in the country’.