Who owns surgutneftegaz, surgut neftegaz. History of Surgutneftegaz – one of the largest and most closed oil companies Who owns Surgutneftegaz

outperformed ExxonMobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, becoming the world's only publicly traded oil company to deliver positive returns to investors following OPEC's November decision to defend its market share and the ensuing price collapse, Bloomberg reported. Over the past 15 months, the dividend yield on the company's papers amounted to 18.5%, the agency calculated, while the shares have fallen 14% since November. Thus, the income of shareholders amounted to a total of 6.4%, taking into account dividends reinvested in securities, the agency indicates. Exxon shares fell 9.4%, but dividend payouts softened the fall to 5.4%. Shell losses were 31%, while the dividend yield was 5.6%, according to Bloomberg data. The rest of the majors are also in the red: Chevron shares have fallen 29% since November 2014, while the dividend yield was 3.75%, Total lost 16.7% of the quotes value, and the dividend income brought investors only 5.8%. Chinese PetroChina lost 47.6% of its share price, while the dividend yield was 2.4%.

Company reserve

Surgutneftegaz only once and unexpectedly for everyone bought in 2009 a 21.2% stake in the Hungarian company MOL, but sold the stake two years later. “I don’t need to buy anything. We have everything!<....>It is worse when there is no money. Then you don’t know where to run, where to borrow, at what percentage,” said Vladimir Bogdanov, CEO of the company, in 2012.

The reason for Surgutneftegaz's success is obvious: the company has huge dollar deposits (more than $30 billion - Vedomosti), says Sergey Vakhrameev, portfolio manager at GL Financial Group. In 2014, Surgutneftegaz earned RUB 846 billion on foreign exchange differences, while IFRS profit tripled to RUB 885 billion. As a result, Surgutneftegaz paid record dividends: 63.2 billion rubles. on preferred and 23 billion rubles. on ordinary shares, reminds Vakhrameev. Dividends on preferred shares increased by 3.5 times, on ordinary shares - by 8%. Other Russian oil companies do not have such an airbag, as a result, they went into the red in terms of share returns, like the world majors. Lukoil, taking into account dividends, lost 27%, Rosneft - 35%, Gazprom - 44%, Vakhrameev calculated.

Surgutneftegaz is the leader in Russia both in terms of dividend yield and TSR (total shareholder return), says Aton analyst Alexander Kornilov. The dividend yield of Surgutneftegaz prefs since June 2014, when oil prices began to fall, was 37.8%, and TSR - 96%, while for other Russian companies these figures are 4-14.3 and 1.1-53 .9% respectively, he points out.

Bloomberg reveals the owners of 22% of preferred shares of Surgutneftegaz (in total, preferred papers account for 18% of the capital). Among them are Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo & Co, JPMorgan Chase & Co, Blackrock Fund Advisors and others. “But the beneficiaries of the company are unknown, and as an investor, I have a question: how long are shareholders willing to share such dividends with minority shareholders? In the event of a further fall in oil prices and the devaluation of the ruble, the risk of a revision of the dividend policy also grows, ”says Vakhrameev. In addition, the company has already found itself in a situation where dividends ($1.5 billion) exceeded annual cash flow (about $1 billion in 2015), the expert points out. Before the oil price crash, the company was generating $2-3 billion a year, he estimates. But Surgutneftegaz will have no problems with the payment of dividends: the company can cut investments, withdraw money from deposits, increase debt, the expert lists. On the other hand, if oil prices start to rise, Surgutneftegaz will record a large loss in exchange rate differences, so it's time to sell the company's preferred shares now, advises Andrey Polishchuk, an analyst at Raiffeisenbank.

The state company Rosneft, which has a de facto monopoly in the pipeline, will have to move. At the end of last week, Transneft President Nikolai Tokarev announced that Surgutneftegaz plans to supply up to 9 million tons of raw materials via the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline. In this regard, foreign investors again asked themselves the question: what kind of company is Surgutneftegaz, for which Rosneft itself was moved, and who are its owners?

The state company Surgutneftegaz was privatized in the 1990s. However, if other large energy companies, after voucher privatization and loans-for-shares auctions, fell into the hands of bankers who later became oligarchs, Surgutneftegaz remained in the management of the “labor collective”, which is still headed by the same "Red Director" Vladimir Bogdanov. True, since that time the company has had new owners, but their names are not known to anyone for certain - the company has never disclosed a list of its main shareholders.

According to the British Financial Times, CEO Bogdanov last answered a question about the owners of the company in 2008. Then he told foreign journalists that he himself did not really know who had the majority of the company's shares. Say, he himself has less than 2% of the shares, so he does not even have access to the register of shareholders, Bogdanov explained.

According to the Financial Times Vladimir Milov, who until 2002 was the Deputy Minister of Energy of Russia, such a "tangled" ownership system was created specifically in order to hide the names of well-known officials - shareholders, possibly belonging to the highest echelons of power. “Who actually owns Surgutneftegaz is the No. 1 secret in the Russian oil industry,” Milov said. However, this ownership structure can be explained by two more reasons: the concentration of control in the hands of management and protection from hostile takeovers.

At the same time, unlike Rosneft, which has 70 billion dollars of debt, Surgutneftegaz is the richest oil company in Russia, but its money is spread out in different "pockets". As Vedomosti wrote, there is a whole network of 23 firms, non-profit partnerships and funds affiliated with Surgutneftegaz - either established by it or managed by its managers, including CEO Bogdanov. The total financial investments in these organizations reach over 1 trillion rubles. Thus, Surgutneftegaz's accounts have more than $30 billion of free funds: the company keeps money mainly in dollars, annually earning up to $1 billion on interest. And who owns these billions is unknown.

Kremlin Lubricant Fund

Western analysts suggest that the money and shares of Surgutneftegaz belong to large government officials, and Bogdanov is simply their "watcher". The American New York Times writes that there are rumors among investors that Surgutneftegaz is just the Kremlin's "lubrication fund". And what do participants of the Russian stock market think about this topic? SP asked about this ChebotarevLab Asset Manager Yuri Chebotarev.

- Before the attack on Yukos in 2003, a few months before the start of the trial, Putin went to Surgut and had a long conversation with Bogdanov, who after that stopped talking about the market, and talks more and more about oil rigs and pumps. The fact is that Yukos was then the first Russian oil company that began to publish full open reporting on its activities, and to indicate exactly who owns its shares, what income it has. Thus, Yukos switched to international reporting standards, and, according to the logic of the market, everyone else should have done the same. But the Kremlin obviously did not like this, and Yukos was crushed, and Surgutneftegaz after that became the most closed company on the market.

SP: What does this mean?

- It only says that Surgutneftegaz has something to hide about its shareholders and profits - any participant in the stock market will tell you this. In this regard, it is worth remembering what happened this year in Cyprus. When the banking crisis began there, and the deposits of bank customers began to be cut, there were reports that many accounts of Surgutneftegaz had suffered. Thus, the international financial elite made it clear to the Kremlin that they know where the money of Russian officials is stored and can easily get it. And judging by the fact that the accounts of Russian clients suffered the most, it seems that the Cyprus operation was conceived precisely for this purpose.

— The shareholding structure of Surgutneftegaz is very tricky — circular: when one offshore company owns a block of shares, and it is owned by another offshore company, which, in turn, is owned by a third offshore company. In general, offshore on offshore, and offshore drives. And given that offshore companies do not disclose information about the beneficiaries, it is beyond the power of any market analyst to calculate who actually owns the shares of Surgutneftegaz and in what proportions. But Western intelligence agencies may well find out the owners, and they know them, because in Cyprus they acted confidently, knowing who they would strike the main blow. And, in general, they did not hide it.

"SP": - How does the market perceive such closeness of "Surgutneftegaz", does it hurt its image?

“Surgutneftegaz has no image on the stock exchange, stock market players are not interested in this company at all. And its shares are used by stock speculators only to hedge risks - they go into these securities, the value of which practically does not change when the market crashes. It is not clear why Surgutneftegaz lists its shares on the stock exchange at all, they would have made it a closed joint-stock company. True, then it would be necessary to at least formally indicate the names of the owners, the reference to the "labor collective" would no longer work.

"SP": - Why, then, "Surgutneftegaz" is so worried about the West that they constantly raise this topic?

- An official, especially a high-ranking official, all over the world has no right to do business, because he has access to insider information and administrative resources. What is happening with Surgutneftegaz is a violation of Western business standards and global rules of the game in the market, of course, the global financial elite does not like this, and it will fight this situation to the last. And Cyprus is just the beginning...

Piggy bank of Russian officials

Although Surgutneftegaz officially remained under the control of its "labor collective", experts point to the company's connection with the circle of oligarchs who "rose" after Vladimir Putin became president.

In April of this year, it was discovered that about 40% of its shares, worth $15 billion, had disappeared from Surgutneftegaz's balance sheet. The only explanation for such a disappearance may be that these shares were sold, but no one knows to whom, and there were no announcements from the company's management about this.

The world market reacted to this situation, to put it mildly, with surprise. According to the Financial Times, "Someone should have sued, but look what happened to Browder."

In 2005 a British citizen Bill Browder, the owner of the Hermitage Capital investment fund, having bought a minority stake in Surgutneftegaz, went to court to get more information about a significant share of shares held by non-transparent structures, and also tried to cancel them. But he was expelled from Russia five days before his lawsuit against Surgutneftegaz was due to be heard in court.

True, during the reporting in April this year, Western analysts had the opportunity to ask the management of Surgutneftegaz a question about the shares, but the company's management replied that "the law does not require disclosure of this information." However, as foreign lawyers note, if the shares were indeed transferred to new owners, then the company is "walking on the edge of the abyss." Indeed, under Russian law, if the sale of shares was not carried out in lump-sum packages of more than 5%, then disclosure of such information is not required. That is, from a purely legal point of view, Surgutneftegaz operates within the framework of the law, but from the point of view of world practice and norms, it clearly ignores them.

One way or another, but at a time when all major Russian oil companies are trying to become more transparent, and even hire Western investment banks as PR people to raise the price of their shares, Surgutneftegaz is moving in a different direction. Although the company trades in valuable raw materials and makes a large profit, its shares on the stock exchanges are valued even lower than their monetary assets are worth. The story of Surgutneftegaz is a typical example of Western investors' distrust of the Russian economy as a whole, the publication believes. The reason is the opacity of the company's ownership and its actions. For example, investors did not know for a long time that she financed the construction of a Russian Navy submarine base in Siberia.

In 23 firms of this "piggy bank", the money of Russian officials and their close "effective managers" is securely stored. Another confirmation of this is the story cited by the Financial Times. Krinum, which is based in the Western Siberian village of Barsovo and, according to its registration documents, provides only janitors, has 35 billion rubles, or $1.1 billion, in long-term assets, according to a Rosstat report. At the same time, the director of the company Olga Pustovalova, concurrently is the chief accountant of Surgutneftegaz, which is based half an hour from Barsovo in the city of Surgut. By phone, Pustovalova confirmed to the publication that she is also the director of Krinum, but declined to answer further questions.

According to the Financial Times, Krinum and 22 other similar firms, trusts and organizations based in Surgut and its environs are the “key to the puzzle” that has been tormenting Western investors and analysts for a decade. And its solution may give an answer to the question: who still owns the fourth largest oil company in Russia?

Photo: ITAR-TASS / Yuri Belinsky

The richest resident of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, CEO and co-owner of Surgutneftegaz, the third largest Russian oil company after Rosneft and Lukoil, Vladimir Bogdanov recently won a state award, the first in his life. The prize in the field of science was awarded to him for "the creation of rational systems for the development of oil, oil and gas and gas-oil fields in Western Siberia." It was presented personally by President Putin in a solemn ceremony in the Kremlin on June 12, 2017.

Few of the Russian billionaires can boast of such a high assessment of their work. In the top ten of the Forbes list, no one has a state award, including the president of Lukoil Vagit Alekperov. Meanwhile, Bogdanov occupies a modest 49th place in the ranking with a fortune of $1.9 billion. He has been on all Forbes lists since 2004, and the estimate of his fortune has changed slightly, from $1.7 billion to $4.4 billion.

In life, the billionaire is modest, and he avoids publicity. He was last listed by Forbes in 2004. Then the image of an ascetic living in Surgut in an ordinary apartment building and having a budget vacation in Karlovy Vary was fixed for him for many years. Another Forbes question about whether anything has changed since then remained unanswered. The secretary at Bogdanov's office told Forbes that he was on vacation, email was disabled throughout the company "due to the threat of hacker attacks" and there was no operational communication with the head.

Bogdanov came to work at Surgutneftegaz in 1976, in 1984, at the age of 33, he became the general director of the enterprise, and in 1995 he organized a scheme to buy out a state stake in the amount of 40.16% of shares through a loans-for-shares auction. Since then, the structure of the company's share capital has changed several times, but who its real owners are still a secret with seven seals. In a 2016 report, Surgut states that "the company's shares are distributed among shareholders, none of whom is the ultimate controlling party and does not exercise significant influence." Bogdanov, as an individual, today owns 0.37% of the ordinary shares of Surgutneftegaz.

Another secret of Surgut is the astronomical amounts of funds that the company keeps on deposits in Russian banks, mainly in US dollars. By the end of 2016, this amount was 2.181 trillion rubles, or $36 billion. This is almost 20% of all deposits of Russian companies in all Russian banks. In Sberbank, Russian companies keep 2.637 trillion rubles on deposits, in VTB - 2.181 trillion rubles (exactly the amount Surgut has accumulated). In all other banks, this figure is much lower.

Why does Surgut need so much cash? “We have something to spend on: we are developing new provinces. This money is a safety net: no one knows what will happen to oil prices. We need them for the team to live in peace. If the situation of 1998 happens again, what will we do then?” - Bogdanov answered the questions of shareholders at the annual meeting in 2013. By that time, Surgut had already accumulated 1 trillion rubles, or $31 billion at the then exchange rate. The price of oil has more than halved, but the stash has remained intact. On the market, Surgutneftegaz, with its accumulated $36 billion, is worth only $20 billion.

She conquered the big oil of Western Siberia. Surgutneftegaz has become the guarantor of Russia's energy independence, remaining the most closed oil company in the country

Reference Information:

• The name of the company: OJSC Surgutneftegaz;
• Legal form of activity: Public corporation;
• Kind of activity: exploration, development and development of oil and oil and gas fields, production and sale of oil and gas, production and marketing of petroleum products and petrochemicals (total 57);
• Revenue for 2016: 992.5 billion rubles;
• CEO: Vladimir Bogdanov;
• Beneficiaries: are not disclosed;
• Number of staff: 114.3 thousand people;
• The site of the company: https://www.surgutneftegas.ru/.

OJSC Surgutneftegaz is one of the largest Russian oil companies. Exploration and production of oil and gas, gas processing and supply of electrical energy, oil refining and marketing of petroleum products, oil and gas chemistry, research and design activities have been developed in it. The enterprises belonging to the concern carry out a full range of works:

• scientific and design support of the entire scope of work;
• search and exploration of hydrocarbon raw materials;
• extraction and processing of oil and gas;
• production of electrical and thermal energy;
• production and marketing of petroleum products, related products and services;
• production of an extensive range of oil and gas chemical products.

The history of Surgutneftegaz is only a few years old, but its achievements are quite convincing.

history of the company

The official countdown began in 1977. It was then, 40 years ago, that a diversified production association appeared. But that was preceded by other events.

Important dates in the history of Surgutneftegaz

• March 1964 - the oilfield department "Surgutneft" is created. The development of Big Oil in Western Siberia began. By the beginning of next year, the first 7 wells were producing oil - 134,000 tons.
• 1965 - the first echelon of oil entered the Kirishi refinery. Surgut was transformed from a workers' settlement into a city.
• 1968 - NPU "Surgutneft" reached the level of production of 1 million tons of oil per year.

And then there was the year 1977. The period of the 70s for the West Siberian fuel and energy complex became the "golden" age. More and more new deposits were put into development:

• Bystrinskoye;
• Lyantorskoye;
• Solkinskoe;
• Savuyskoye;
• Fedorovskoye (later unofficially called the "second Samotlor").

Oilfield facilities were automated one by one. Surgutskaya GRES started its work.

The company has concentrated its activities in the Russian regions from the Baltic to the Far East. Its main resource base in Western Siberia is located in the Khanty-Mansiysk and Yamalo-Nenets autonomous regions, in the Tyumen and Novosibirsk regions.

And Surgut itself acquired the status, albeit unofficial, of the Siberian oil capital.

The use of science-intensive high technologies (environmentally and resource-saving), the implementation of innovative potential, and full cost control allow the company not only to solve even the most complex production tasks, but to do it as efficiently as possible, while observing environmental standards and industrial safety rules.

Oil production

Surgutneft, the oldest enterprise in the structure of the company, was created more than half a century ago from scratch. Only the Ob connected him with the outside world. Not a single capital building, not a single paved road, and only all-terrain vehicles served for off-road travel.

Until 1967, seasonal oil production and field development were organized - for navigation, the extracted oil was sent along the river by barges to the Omsk oil refinery, in winter the wells were idle. The Ust-Balyk-Omsk oil pipeline made it possible to organize year-round operation of the fields.

The share of this oilfield enterprise was to be a kind of testing ground, where the possibilities of performing geological developments in incredibly difficult climatic conditions were tested.

Oil refining

The Kirishi oil refinery became the All-Union shock construction site. Having started in 1961, already in 1966 he issued his first products. And six years later it entered the top five largest in the country. Its task was to provide fuel to the northwestern Russian regions.

And when the operation of the Yaroslavl-Kirishi oil pipeline began in 1969, oil from the fields of Western Siberia began to be processed for processing. Moreover, an opportunity has opened up for the export of oil products to Western Europe, which was facilitated by proximity to the Baltic ports.

By the end of 2013, the largest complex for deep oil refining in Europe was operating on the basis of the Kirishi Refinery.

Sales area

Novgorodnefteprodukt and Tvernefteprodukt, two marketing companies of Surgutneftegaz, are directly related to the Nobel brothers, who became the founders of the first Russian organizations trading in petroleum products.

During the years of industrialization of the country, such enterprises were rare, because the automotive industry in Russia had not yet received proper development, steam locomotives, as a rule, needed coal as fuel. And only ships, river and sea, began to use fuel oil, and the population needed kerosene. So, only by the end of the 1940s and 1950s there was a real need for large volumes of oil products, and, finally, oil product supply enterprises were developed.

Kaliningradnefteprodukt was created in 1946 on the basis of the facilities of firms that operated in East Prussia - Shell and Nitag. Until now, the gas station building and tanks made of Krupp steel have been preserved.

Each of Surgutneftegaz sales enterprises sells only high-quality oil products and occupies a leading position in its region in terms of service level.

Rice. 4. Filling station "Surgutneftegaz" in Veliky Novgorod

Access to financial markets

The company's shares were issued in October 1993. They were distributed like this:

• in state ownership - 45%;
• went on sale - 8%;
• the company redeemed for vouchers - 7%;
• put up for a mortgage auction - 40%.

The latter went to the winner - NPF Surgutneftegaz.

The company does not make any efforts to attract a strategic investor, rather, on the contrary. It seeks to keep large blocks of shares in its hands, and sells the rest to small investors from the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug.

The company coped with the task. By 1996, outside investors were unable to acquire enough shares to gain the right to influence the operation of Surgutneftegaz.

The year 1997 was marked by the entry into the world financial market, placing in the Bank of New York American depositary receipts of the 1st level, each of which was equal to 50 ordinary shares of OJSC.

The crisis that broke out in 1998 did not affect the company itself. Only the exchange quotes of shares fell 10 times, and this had nothing to do with the attitude towards Surgutneftegaz, the shares of any Russian company were questioned.

But he also showed how effective the policy was, which was declared by the management of the joint-stock company, when the calculation was made only on their own strength. The company survived without much loss both low oil prices and the depreciation of the ruble.

In June 2003, by the decision of the shareholders, the OJSC was transformed into Leasing Production LLC, 93% of the authorized capital of which were shares of OJSC Surgutneftegaz. So the company eliminated the danger of a hostile takeover. In addition, the minimum requirements for disclosure of information by an open joint-stock company are established by law.

Company today

Surgutneftegaz is known all over the world as a company with a reliable reputation, sustainable competitive advantages, developed international relations, high-tech business and a high production culture. And, speaking about it, first of all they mention the financial situation, which remains stable despite the crises. Surgutneftegaz has a sufficient reserve of funds so that external factors do not affect the implementation and financial support of the planned projects.

According to Forbes, at the end of 2016, the company ranks second in the TOP-10 largest private companies in Russia, second only to LUKoil.

“There is no point in changing your financial policy in pursuit of guessing where the ruble or the price of oil will go. We are focused on our tasks: ensuring production efficiency, reducing costs, introducing technologies.” V. Bogdanov in an interview with INTERFAX

The company does not create joint ventures, does not attract large foreign loans, preferring to rely on its own strength.

Forty years after its inception, the company is engaged in exploration, production and processing of oil and gas, power generation, development of petrochemicals and gas chemistry products, and marketing of its own products.

Sources: company website

The company's achievements in oil production have become possible thanks to three main areas of activity:

• commissioning of new deposits;
• non-decreasing activity of production drilling;
• use of technological solutions applicable in given specific conditions and features.

Source: OJSC “Surgutneftegas” annual report for 2016

Investment strategy

The investment policy of Surgutneftegaz is aimed at ensuring stable growth in production, exploration and processing. Their direction is rather strict. The Company does not invest in non-core assets.

Tab. 3. Investments of the company for 2012-1016, billion rubles