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Energy Officials Request Break for Yukos Russian energy officials said Yukos should be given access to its frozen bank accounts to prevent a break in oil production, while the company received a default notice Wednesday on a $1.6 billion loan that pushes it closer toward bankruptcy. Sergei Oganesyan, head of the Federal Energy Agency, said a drop in production from Yukos - which pumps 1.7 million barrels a day, or 2 percent of world output - could be harmful to the country as a whole and lead to a substantial cut in oil shipments, Russia's main export commodity. "If a company can't pay for customs, transport or equipment, it will have to stop well flow," Oganesyan was quoted as saying by Dow Jones Newswires. "Our goal is to prevent this from happening. There are a lot of social consequences that could happen in the event of such a collapse." World crude oil prices remained close to record highs Wednesday after easing earlier, but markets remained heated on persistent concerns about possible supply disruptions, including from Yukos. Energy and Industry Ministry spokesman Yan Pekhonen said the Energy Ministry, which oversees Oganesyan's agency, requested that Yukos be given at least temporary access to accounts. That appeared to reflect a split in the Russian leadership over what to do about the nation's largest oil producer. Bailiffs have frozen Yukos accounts in pursuit of the company's $3.4 billion tax debt for 2000, part of a series of tax claims and court cases widely seen as Kremlin retribution for the political activities of former CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky - now on trial on charges including fraud and tax evasion. Yukos executives have said they will have to scale back output if the courts don't give the company access to its accounts. The Justice Ministry had no public response to the Energy Ministry's request. The company's cash crunch looked set to intensify Wednesday with the company's announcement that it has received a default notice on a second bank loan. A Yukos spokesman refused to give details. Dow Jones Newswires reported that the creditor was Menatep, the holding company through which Khodorkovsky and his associates control Yukos. No one from Menatep, which had lent Yukos $1.6 billion, could be reached to comment. Some analysts had predicted that Khodorkovsky would use this loan as a way to force the company into bankruptcy if no other options were available. As one of Yukos' key lenders, Menatep would have to be given some say over how Yukos' assets were sold off in bankruptcy proceedings - something Khodorkovsky and the other major shareholders are unlikely to receive if the government simply dismantles the company and liquidates the assets itself to collect the tax claim. "This is yet another step on the path toward Yukos' bankruptcy," said Valery Nesterov, an oil and gas analyst at the Troika Dialog brokerage. "There is a ferocious PR war and this is one of many warnings and threats from the company against taking away its main production assets and selling them at fire-sale prices." Yukos' chief production unit, Yuganskneftegaz, is currently being evaluated for sale by bailiffs, and the courts have frozen shares in two other main production subsidiaries. Analysts have expressed concern that Yuganskneftegaz, whose value has been estimated at $20 billion, may be sold cheaply. Oganesyan declined to say how much Yuganskneftegaz was worth, but said that in a fair and transparent auction only a major Western oil company would have the money to acquire it, Dow Jones Newswires reported. On its Web site, the RIA-Novosti news agency quoted Oganesyan as saying that if Yukos were forced to halt production because of a cash crunch, there could be a "significant fall" in production and export of Russian oil.
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