By Amie Ferris-Rotman
MOSCOW, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Troubled mid-sized Russian oil firm Urals Energy said on Monday shareholders had approved the transfer of its two key assets to Russia's biggest lender, Sberbank, in return for cancelling debt.
The sale of the London-listed firm's stakes in ZAO Dulisma and Taas Yuriakh will allow it to meet obligations to Sberbank on two loans totalling $630 million, Urals Energy said in a statement after an extraordinary investor meeting in Cyprus.
Earlier this month, Urals said talks about a possible offer for the company with an undisclosed third party had ended.
As the financial crisis bites deeper into Russia's oil industry, mid-sized oil firms are becoming increasingly vulnerable as acquisition targets, analysts say.
Urals holds 99 percent of Dulisma, an oil, gas and condensate field in the eastern Siberian region of Irkutsk that produced around 12,000 barrels of oil per day at end-2008.
It has a 39.5 percent stake in Taas, another large oil field in eastern Siberia. Its purchase of Taas two years ago and upgrades at Dulisma doubled the firm's reserves last year.
Urals has said it plans to delist from the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), London's junior market for smaller and medium-sized companies, once it has sold off its other assets.
These include oil deposits on the stormy Barents Sea in northwest Russia, ArcticNeft, and Petrosakh, which contains oil on the Pacific island Sakhalin.
A company spokesman in London declined to commment on the firm's delisting plans and further sales.
At 1537 GMT, Shares in Urals were down 8.7 percent at 2.625 pence.
Urals, whose owners include chief executive Leonid Dyachenko, the former son-in-law of former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, has said it aims to produce 85,000 barrels of oil per day by 2015.
The oil is planned to feed the Asian pipeline, Russia's first link to China, which will go on stream this year.
(Editing by Dan Lalor) Keywords: URALS SHARES/ (amie.ferris-rotman@reuters.com, +7 495 775 12 42, Reuters Messaging: amie.ferris-rotman.com@reuters.net) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.
MOSCOW, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Troubled mid-sized Russian oil firm Urals Energy said on Monday shareholders had approved the transfer of its two key assets to Russia's biggest lender, Sberbank, in return for cancelling debt.
The sale of the London-listed firm's stakes in ZAO Dulisma and Taas Yuriakh will allow it to meet obligations to Sberbank on two loans totalling $630 million, Urals Energy said in a statement after an extraordinary investor meeting in Cyprus.
Earlier this month, Urals said talks about a possible offer for the company with an undisclosed third party had ended.
As the financial crisis bites deeper into Russia's oil industry, mid-sized oil firms are becoming increasingly vulnerable as acquisition targets, analysts say.
Urals holds 99 percent of Dulisma, an oil, gas and condensate field in the eastern Siberian region of Irkutsk that produced around 12,000 barrels of oil per day at end-2008.
It has a 39.5 percent stake in Taas, another large oil field in eastern Siberia. Its purchase of Taas two years ago and upgrades at Dulisma doubled the firm's reserves last year.
Urals has said it plans to delist from the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), London's junior market for smaller and medium-sized companies, once it has sold off its other assets.
These include oil deposits on the stormy Barents Sea in northwest Russia, ArcticNeft, and Petrosakh, which contains oil on the Pacific island Sakhalin.
A company spokesman in London declined to commment on the firm's delisting plans and further sales.
At 1537 GMT, Shares in Urals were down 8.7 percent at 2.625 pence.
Urals, whose owners include chief executive Leonid Dyachenko, the former son-in-law of former Russian president Boris Yeltsin, has said it aims to produce 85,000 barrels of oil per day by 2015.
The oil is planned to feed the Asian pipeline, Russia's first link to China, which will go on stream this year.
(Editing by Dan Lalor) Keywords: URALS SHARES/ (amie.ferris-rotman@reuters.com, +7 495 775 12 42, Reuters Messaging: amie.ferris-rotman.com@reuters.net) COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved. The copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.