Consortium led by Vitol divests Vostok Oil project stake

MOSCOW. Dec 30 (Interfax) - Vitol, the international commodities trader, has divested its stake in LLC Vostok Oil, which is carrying out one of Rosneft's biggest projects in the north Krasnoyarsk territory.

Vitol said in a press release that a Vitol-led consortium, a joint venture with the Mercantile & Maritime Group through which the interest was held, had completed the sale of its shareholding to Fossil Trading, FZCO, for an undisclosed sum.

The divestment, which was agreed in July 2022 subject to conditions precedent, has been finalized following the completion of all legal formalities.

Rosneft began largescale development of fields on the Taimyr Peninsula as part of the Vostok Oil project in 2020, including the assets of 52 licensed areas in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. The areas comprise the Vankor, Suzun, Tagul, and Lodochnoye fields, as well as the new fields of Payakha, with reserves of more than 1 billion tonnes of oil, and Zapadno-Irkinskoye, with reserves of 0.5 billion tonnes oil. The potential for the production of liquid hydrocarbons could reach 115 million tonnes per year. Rosneft plans to ship 30 million tonnes of oil from Vostok Oil via the Northern Sea Route in 2024.

Rosneft subsidiary RN Trade LLC owns 85% of Vostok Oil. The consortium of Vitol S.A. and Mercantile & Maritime Energy, which is 75% owned by Vitol and 25% by MME, held, via Amur Investments, a 5% stake that it bought for 3.5 billion euros in October 2021. A 10% stake in the project was owned by Trafigura, which in mid-July sold it to Nord Axis Limited, an independent trading company registered in Hong Kong.

Russian President Vladimir Putin permitted deals with stakes in the Vostok Oil project at the beginning of November. Such deals are banned at present, unless special permission is granted.