RUSSIA’S top oil producer Rosneft had met a $7 billion (R80.9bn) loan repayment, it said yesterday, partially easing fears among investors that Western sanctions banning major Russian firms from access to European and US capital could prompt mass defaults.
Shares in the company rose 2.5 percent in morning trade after Rosneft confirmed it had made the payment – part of a two-year $12.7bn on loan it used to buy oil firm TNK-BP – from its own cash reserves.
Rosneft, which produces more oil than Iraq or Iran, has asked for 2.5 trillion roubles (R443bn) from the government to help it weather sanctions and refinance its debts.
But the government is yet to decide how much money to give from the National Wealth Fund, resulting in speculation last week – denied by Rosneft – that it was buying foreign currency on the domestic foreign exchange market.
Rosneft chief executive Igor Sechin said yesterday: “To service its debt the company does not need to enter the currency market, because it generates enough foreign currency earnings.”
Analysts say Rosneft is too big for the state to allow it to fail and point to its successful sale earlier this month of 625 billion roubles worth of domestic bonds – the bulk of the company’s current planned debt refinancing.
The company continues to face a severe squeeze from a collapse in oil prices and the rapid devaluation of the rouble, which has lost 45 percent of its value against the dollar as a result of the sanctions, an approaching economic recession and the dramatic fall in the value of oil, upon which the state budget depends.
Rosneft must make a second loan repayment of $6.9bn in February. Its bridge loan providers were BNP Paribas, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Barclays Bank, Citi, Credit Agricole CIB, ING Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, JP Morgan, Mizuho Corporate Bank, Natixis, Société Générale and UniCredit, according to Thomson Reuters LPC data. – Reuters