by Dmitry Zaks
MOSCOW, Aug 6 (AFP) - The Yukos saga staggered on Friday after a Moscow court ruled the oil titan could retain rights to its top producer just a day after justice officials revoked the group's access to key bank accounts.
The news concerning Yuganskneftegaz -- a subsidiary that accounts for 60 percent of all Yukos' oil production -- came after Moscow financial markets closed.
The oil group's stock ended the day down 11.76 percent on sentiment that the company was about to be dismembered and sold cheaply to Kremlin-linked oil rivals.
World oil prices had hit record highs earlier on initial bad news for Yukos -- a company that pumps one-fifth of all oil in the world's second biggest exporting country.
Friday's decision was the second lifeline thrown to Yukos in as many days.
The first one was abruptly withdrawn earlier in the day and investors were too scared to say anything late Friday about a conflict that has taken on the twists and turns -- and drama -- of a Tolstoy novel.
Yukos held on to its first lifeline for a matter of hours early Thursday when the justice ministry apparently granted it access to bank accounts to pay off back taxes.
Officials then denied this was the case. Investors shook their heads in wonder, while dumping shares in what was once considered the most transparent company in Russia.
Yukos has lost more than three quarters of its market value since the October arrest of its founder and former chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who stood in open opposition to President Vladimir Putin before his arrest.
Its market capitalization is now less than a potential tax bill the state is threatening to impose on the oil giant.
Western oil analysts focused on energy prices said the global problem was not necessarily concern about Yukos -- even though those have helped push prices up -- but broader worries about Russia's inability to pump out oil through its creaking Soviet-era network.
"Pipelines are the problem in Russia, not supply," the United Financial Group brokerage said in its daily research note.
Yukos executives have said repeatedly in recent days that their production is reaching record highs.
"All other news is circumstantial," the note written by United Financial Group's chief analyst Christopher Granville said.
Other analysts agreed that a halt in Russian production was unlikely simply because it would leave a horrible impression of Putin's rule at a time when the West was hurting from the soaring oil prices.
"We will be very surprised if Yukos's production is halted, as the external political repercussions for Russia would be just too large," the Renaissance Capital investment bank said in a research note.
"Although, technically, Transeft (the Russian oil pipeline monopoly) could stop shipping oil as soon as the company stops paying for transportation," which could happen by the end of the month, the bank noted.
Meanwhile the guessing game went on about Putin's own involvement in a case against a company that has dared challenge his rule by pushing its own allies into parliament and trying to organize alternative pipelines to those run by the state.
The general consensus is that Putin is involved -- but not in the daily decisions that have roiled Russian markets and Yukos' stock in recent weeks.
"I doubt that Putin is involved in the details of this case," said Vladimir Pribylovsky of the independent Panorama research institute.
"He was clearly involved in the general decision to take Yukos away from Khodorkovsky, but right now there is a fight among various Kremlin groups about who gets what part of Yukos," Pribylovsky said.
Meanwhile a Russian journalist with experience covering Russia's murky business world speculated that rumors about Yukos were being spread by either the government or the company itself in a bid to make money in the titan's dying days.
"This is now becoming a game between low-level officials," reporter and columnist Yulia Latynina told AFP.
"People who play the markets are involved in this fair. These people are creating havoc and then making money. This is clear," she said.