MOSCOW - Russia will auction off the east Siberian energy assets of bankrupt oil group Yukos for at least 6.4 billion dollars (4.8 billion euros), the company`s court-appointed administrator said on Friday.
The auction will consist of around a dozen oil production assets in Siberia and the sale will take place at the end of April or beginning of May, Eduard Rebgun, the administrator, told AFP.
The starting price is 166 billion rubles (6.4 billion dollars), Rebgun said.
Fields in eastern Siberia are relatively undeveloped but are seen by energy analysts as very promising and are relatively close to energy-hungry Asian markets such as China.
In another auction, Yukos assets in the region of Krasnodar in southern Russia will also be auctioned off at a starting price of 192 million dollars (144 million euros), he added.
The auctions are part of a massive sell-off of assets from Yukos, once Russia`s biggest oil producer, which has been dismantled since 2003 in a series of fraud inquiries.
Former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, formerly Russia`s richest man, is now serving eight years on embezzlement charges in Russia`s far eastern province of Chita.
Critics in Russia and the West have said the Kremlin drove a politicized series of court cases to destroy Yukos, neutralise Khodorkovsky`s political ambitions and restore company assets to state hands.
Russia`s state-controlled oil group Rosneft, which snapped up 9.44 percent of its own shares from Yukos at a bargain price at auction earlier this week, is set to be the main beneficiary from the sell-off, analysts said.
03/30/2007 15:06 GMT