Rusneftegaz () is a Russian oil company headquartered in Moscow, specializing in the extraction, production, and sale of petroleum and petroleum products. As of 2021, Rusneftegaz is the largest privately owned oil company in Russia in terms of revenue and petroleum production, extracting 6.06 million barrels in 2020. While the majority of Rusneftegaz’s oil earnings are derived from upstream and midstream sales within Russia, the company also maintains small-scale operations internationally. The name Rusneftegaz is a portmanteau of the Russian words Russkoye neftegaz (Russian: Русское нефтегаз - Russian oil and gas).
History
Rusneftegaz was originally founded following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in the period after the privatization of the Russian petroleum industry began in 1994. Whilst Rusneftegaz did not participate in the auctions for the assets of formerly state-owned enterprises, by the late 1990s Rusneftegaz owned a number of oil production licenses. These were acquired by Rusneftegaz via private negotiations with other Russian oil companies and as a result, Rusneftegaz was cited as potentially having improper financial relationships with influential parties, including with the Russian Orthodox Church. In the years thereafter Rusneftegaz expanded its commercial interests beyond the oil industry, and in 2004 Rusneftegaz was a financial contributor towards Spetsproektinvest (), a consortium with Ingosstrakh and Mezhprombank formed to bid to manage Sheremetyevo International Airport. Ultimately, the bid was unsuccessful and all of Rusneftegaz's investments outside the scope of the energy industry were divested. Rusneftegaz was then reorganized and refounded in 2005 solely as a holding company for the various subsidiaries holding oil extraction licenses it had previously purchased in northern Russia. After this reorganization, Rusneftegaz expanded considerably in terms of petroleum production through the acquisition of further oil licenses. This ultimately culminated in Rusneftegaz purchasing three VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) oil tankers, with capacity for approximately 300,000 DWT each, for a total of $70.25 million in October 2012.
Rusneftegaz's growth stalled during the mid-2010s after the Russian invasion of the Crimea in 2014. The sanctions implemented by the United States and the European Union in response to the annexation restricted the access of Russian oil companies, including Rusneftegaz, to the modern, technical equipment necessary to increase petroleum extraction rates. Thus, Rusneftegaz’s financial growth slowed, and its annual oil production rates declined after the sanctions came into effect. Therefore, in early 2015 Rusneftegaz undertook another major corporate restructuring and consequently replaced four of the five members of its board of directors with the intention of expanding internationally to pursue further growth. As a result, the Russian Minister of Energy Alexander Novak stated in the months thereafter that Rusneftegaz was interested in entering the energy markets of both Algeria and Egypt. At the eleventh session of the Egyptian-Russian Joint Ministerial Committee, the Russian delegation led by Minister of Trade and Industry Denis Manturov requested that the Egyptian Ministry of Petroleum increase its cooperation with Rusneftegaz. The company later also signed agreements to enter the petroleum production and power generation industries in Iran. In November 2015, Rusneftegaz formed part of a delegation led by Novak to Tehran where it joined the Iranian-Russian Joint Economic Commission with seven other Russian oil and gas companies including Rosneft and Gazprom. The commission established a joint Iranian-Russian bank to facilitate investment in energy infrastructure projects in Iran. As an additional component of the company’s international expansion, Rusneftegaz also opened its first international commodities trading office in New York in 2019, becoming the first Russian oil company to establish such an operation outside Europe. However, the following year Rusneftegaz was significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting decline in global oil prices, ultimately reporting considerably reduced financial results for 2020.