http://rbth.co.uk/news/2014/03/18/crimea_to_hand_over_chernomornaftogaz_to_russias_gazprom_-_deputy_ceo_35182.html
18:49 March 18, 2014 Interfax
The Crimean authorities intend to hand over Chernomornaftogaz to Russia's Gazprom (MOEX: GAZP) whose specialists have effectively taken the company under their control, Chernomornaftogaz Deputy CEO Vladimir Plechun said.
"First Chernomornaftogaz will undergo nationalization, a new enterprise will be organized that will receive all the licenses to develop the Black Sea shelf in Crimea. Then it will become a Gazprom business unit," Plechun told Forbes, citing Crimea's First Deputy Prime Minister Rustam Temirgaliyev.
Already a group of Gazprom representatives, including its head of business development, is working at the Chernomornaftogaz head office, he said.
"They instantly started studying documents and established control. According to Muscovites themselves, the addition of the shelf and Chernomornaftogaz will increase Gazprom's capital by $50 billion. They are appraising the Black Sea shelf around the Crimean peninsula at the Caspian level," the Chernomornaftogaz executive representative said.
Neither Naftogaz of Ukraine, nor the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry, nor the Ukrainian security authorities did anything to retain control over Chernomornaftogaz, its assets and documentation, he said.
Earlier, the manager of energy programs at Nomos Center Michael Gonchar said that in the case of Chernomornaftogaz' acquisition by Gazprom, Ukraine must ask the international arbitration to order the return of the company's assets or the arrest of other assets of Russian companies abroad.
The peninsula's continental shelf, the assets of the state-owned joint-stock company Chernomornaftogaz and the state-owned Feodosia oil terminal are now the property of Crimea, the State Council of the Republic of Crimea (the former Supreme Council) declared.
Chernomornaftogaz develops the Ukrainian shelves in the Black and Azov Seas. The company also produces hydrocarbons in the Crimean fields and runs the Glebovskoye underground gas storage facility and the gas mains located on the peninsula. The company is fully owned by Naftogaz Ukraine.
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