Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday welcomed the signing of agreements governing portions of a $672 million loan package for Russia's Tyumen Oil Co. Tyumen Oil will use US equipment and services and US and Russian labor.
Dallas-based Halliburton Co. will use $292 million of the 10-year loans to fund a 3-year project to stop the decline and maintain production of Tyumen's 320,000 b/d of crude interest in Siberia's giant Samotlor oil field. Halliburton will also use $93 million in other unsecured loans for the project.
"This is a good example of true cooperation," said Putin. He made his comments after the signing ceremony for the [US] Export-Import Bank loan guarantees Friday while in New York for the United Nations Millennium Summit.
The New York branch of Germany's Commerzbank AG is lending the money for the Samotlor project, part of the largest loan guarantees provided to a Soviet or Russian company. The US Export-Import Bank is guaranteeing the loan.
The other part of the loan, set to be approved in late October, totals $217 million in loan guarantees that Tyumen Oil will use to upgrade its Ryazan refinery, 120 miles southeast of Moscow. Bloomfield, NJ-based ABB Lummus Global, a unit of ABB Group, will assist with that upgrade.
An additional $70 million in financing for the Ryazan project will come from other unsecured sources, says Tyumen.
