25 Jun 2010 13:05

Tatneft boosts 2009 dividend 48%

AMLETYEVSK, Tatarstan. June 25 (Interfax) - Shareholders in Tatneft accepted a dividend of 6.56 rubles on all shares at their AGM, an Interfax correspondent reports from the meeting.

The company will pay 30% of net profit to Russian Accounting Standards (RAS). Tatneft turned 50.874 billion rubles to RAS in 2009, which means it will pay out 15.26 billion rubles in dividends for the year. This is 48.4% more than it paid out for 2008 (9.629 billion rubles), which was 30% of that year's net profits (4.42 rubles on all shares).

Tatneft will spend 5.699 billion rubles of last year's profit on capex and use the remaining 29.9 billion rubles for production development.

The AGM re-elected the board of directors in its entirety. CJSC Energy Consulting/Audit will audit the company for 2010.

Tatneft's share capital is 2,326,199,000 rubles split into 1,178,691,000 common and 147,509,000 preferred shares with par value of one ruble. Svyazinvestneftekhim, owned by Tatarstan's government, holds 33.595% of that share capital (35.865% of voting shares).

Shafagat Takhautdinov, Tatneft's general director, said at the AGM that the company planned to increase its loan portfolio, which was 22 billion rubles at the end of last year. He said Tatneft raised a syndicated loan of $2 billion a few days ago.

The next borrowing is not scheduled until 2011, he said, without saying how much might be borrowed.

The company raised long- and short-term loans in 2009 and plans to continue borrowing because it was budgeting a lot of its own funds for the construction of the oil refining and petrochemicals cluster in Nizhnekamsk.

Takhautdinov also said Tatneft planned to form a joint venture with Libyan National Oil Corp. (NOC) in 2011 to develop four prospects in Libya, starting next year.

He said the JV would be formed along the same lines as one with Syria's Albu-Kamal Petroleum Company, which is developing the South Kishma field.

Two exploration wells drilled at the 82-4 prospect in Libya have struck oil, Takhautdinov said. The four license blocks contain a probable 247 million tonnes of recoverable reserves and exploration costs are estimated at $260 million.