MOSCOW - The sale of Yuganskneftegaz, key production unit of oil company YUKOS, will bring in more than RUR 100 billion to the federal budget in 2005, Russia’s finance minister Alexei Kudrin told reporters on Tuesday.

Kudrin said the cash would go to the Russian Federal Property Fund first, after which it would be distributed among budgets at different levels, including in the regions where Yuganskneftegaz operated. The distribution is currently carried out by the federal tax service and the treasury. In the estimation of the finance ministry, the federal budget would get at least RUR 100 billion.

In other developments, the finance minister said Vnesheconombank had borrowed another $6 billion in December 2004 to fund the acquisition of Yuganskneftegaz by Rosneft.

On December 31, 2004, Russia’s central bank reported that the country’s government agencies had borrowed about $10 billion in December. “It seems this includes the loan Vnesheconombank obtained from Chinese banks to finance Rosneft’s deal,” Kudrin said.

Sergei Oganesyan, director of the federal energy agency, said earlier today that Rosneft had paid for Yuganskneftegaz with funds it borrowed from Russian banks, and with an $6 billion advance payment from China’s CNPC.

A 76.79 percent stake in Yuganskneftegaz was sold off at auction on December 19, 2004. There were two bidders: Gazprom’s subsidiary Gazpromneft, and unknown company Baikalfinancegroup. The latter purchased the stake for RUR 260.75 billion (about $9.35 billion). Later, Rosneft purchased Baikalfinancegroup.

Perhaps, other YUKOS assets will face a similar fate soon. Oganesyan did not rule out that Samaraneftegaz and Tomskneft could be sold.

It was necessary to decide what to do with YUKOS’s remaining assets, he noted. If they are slated for sale, this should be done quickly. If the price of the assets was equivalent to the size of the debt, they should be sold together, in one go, Oganesyan said.

He said he had no information regarding the sale of YUKOS’s remaining assets in order to settle the company’s tax debt, adding this was jurisdiction of the Russian government.