Vadim Rybin, head of the oil industry department at the Federal Energy Agency (Rosenergo) said last December a draft government resolution to transfer a 24% government stake in the CPC to Transneft could soon be submitted to the government. Earlier, Rosenergo head Sergei Oganesyan said the government had already made a decision in principle to transfer the asset to Transneft where it holds a 75% stake.
"We are not the initiators in this transfer and are not really keen to take this on. But if the state delegates us, then we'll do it in a highly professional manner," Semyon Vainshtok said.
The Caspian Pipeline Consortium was founded by the governments of Russia, Kazakhstan and Oman in 1992 to build an oil pipeline from western Kazakhstan to the Russian port of Novorossiisk on the Black Sea. The governments of Russia and Kazakhstan have stakes of 24% and 19%, respectively, in the CPC, while Oman holds 7%.
In 1996 the CPC was reorganized to include eight energy producers representing international, Russian and Kazakh companies, including Chevron, LUKoil, ExxonMobil, BP, Rosneft, Shell, ENI, BG and Gazmunaigaz.
The 1,510-km (938-mile) CPC pipeline system was put into operation in October 2001 and today has reached a capacity of 30 million metric tons (219.9 million barrels) of oil a year.
