Rosneft announced Tuesday that it was buying the 49 percent of Itera Oil and Gas Company that it does not already own for $2.9 billion. Rosneft is buying the stake from Itera Holdings Ltd., a natural resources company controlled by Igor Makarov.
Earlier this year, Rosneft wrapped up a much bigger deal, buying TNK-BP from BP and its Russian partners for more than $55 billion. The deal made Rosneft the world’s largest publicly traded oil company by production, but the company’s acquisition spree is not ending there.
Rosneft’s president and chairman, Igor Sechin, has ambitions to expand the company’s current relatively modest role in natural gas, challenging the monopoly of state-controlled Gazprom, with the apparent support of President Vladimir Putin. Rosneft currently produces less than a tenth of the gas that Gazprom does.
According to a slide in a presentation for investrs in April, Rosneft said it aimed to more than double its gas production by 2020. The company also indicated that it wanted to expand market share and look into liquefied natural gas ventures, probably in Asia. “Gas business is one of the top priorities of the company,†Mr. Sechin said in a statement on Tuesday.
