Russia Oil and Gas Market Update Dec, 2013

 Ukraine builds plant for recycling used oil.
 Top Russian oil firm Rosneft said it would sell about $6 billion worth of refined products to BP,
establishing the British major among its biggest buyers after years without any such deal.
 The latest transaction comes on top of a $5.3 billion deal for BP to buy crude, agreed earlier this
year. Both came only months after Rosneft hired a former senior BP trader, Marcus Cooper, as head of
its own trading arm in Geneva.
 BP has become Rosneft’s second‐largest shareholder, behind only the Kremlin, after Rosneft
took over BP’s Russian venture TNK‐BP for $55 billion in March.
 But the participation in Rosneft’s ownership was slow to translate into cooperation in upstream
projects, while Exxon Mobil signed a flurry of deals with Rosneft to tap the Russian Arctic together.
 BP has also been absent for many years from the list of major buyers of Rosneft’s oil and refined
products, while rivals such as Shell have been among the biggest players in taking oil exports from the
world’s largest producer.
 Over the past year, Rosneft also has sold large amounts of crude to trading houses Glencore,
Vitol and Trafigura as they have lined up $11.5 billion worth of pre‐payment, which helped Rosneft ease
the burden on its balance sheet.
 Cooper took over trading operations at Rosneft’s Geneva office after years at BP, including a
senior position at its office in Singapore.