by Dmitry Zaks
MOSCOW, Aug 13 (AFP) - Investors breathed a sigh of relief Friday after a Western bank was asked to mediate the Yukos oil saga in a sign many here saw as a Kremlin decision not to renationalize Russia's oil.
A justice ministry decision to allow a Dresdner Bank subsidiary to determine the value of Yukos's main oil producing unit means the company will likely have a far higher valuation than one proposed by the state, which could still keep alive Russia's largest oil producer.
The decision came Thursday after top US officials piled pressure on President Vladimir Putin's administration to come clean about what it planned to do with Yukos amid fears that oil exports from the world's number two producing nation could be disrupted.
China -- whose energy-starved northern regions rely heavily on Yukos -- has done the same, according a Wall Street Journal report.
Yukos produces about 1.7 million barrels of oil per day -- nearly as much as the current maximum output of Iraq.
The year-long conflict surrounding Yukos is now focused on its unit Yugansk, which pumps 60 percent of the group's oil, and how and to whom it will be sold off.
Yugansk has been confiscated by the state to pay off a 3.4-billion-dollar (2.78-billion-euro) tax bill that could grow to 10 billion dollars in the coming weeks.
Yukos founders are trying to save its prized assets -- or access to its oil exports --- through complicated business procedures but the general mood here is that Yugansk will be sold.
But most have written off Yukos as an entity in its current titanic form and are instead focused on Putin's future economic policies, seeing the affair as a test case.
Yugansk was valued at 1.7 billion dollars by court bailiffs and at up to 30 billion dollars by the company itself and some Western analysts.
Many here feared that Yugansk would be priced low and sold off at a bargain-basement sum to a state-linked oil company -- a move that would suggest that Russia was turning back on post-Soviet reforms.
Analysts agree the valuation by Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, the international investment bank unit of German bank Dresdner, is likely to be closer to the figure mentioned by Yukos.
This make it far more difficult for the state to peddle off Yugansk to a government-linked company in a move which many fears would represent the renationalization of key private assets.
"With all due respect to the ministry of justice, the appointment of a major international investment house to value Yugansk does not look like something the ministry would undertake on its own initiative," Renaissance Capital said in a research note.
"In our view, the political leadership has sent a clear signal that it is willing to limit the damage both to the investment climate and to minority shareholders in the Yukos affair."
Yukos stock gained more than 18 percent after the news broke Thursday and the stock closed at a weeks-long high of 4.3 dollars Friday on the dollar-denominated RTS exchange.
Western analysts are reading this as confirmation, no matter how weak, that Putin was not going back on privatization.
"This fear, i.e., that assets could be 'stolen' by the state leaving little or no value remaining in Yukos, has been the main depressant on equity market sentiment since the start," said Chris Weafer of Alfa Bank.
Renaissance Capital said it was now clear "that another Yukos affair is highly unlikely, so there is no systematic risk to the market."