VILNIUS, June 29 (RIA Novosti, Vladimir Vodo)-Lithuanian will take into account a request from the Russian Justice Ministry to prohibit deals in the country involving shares belonging to the Yukos oil company in Mazeikiu Nafta, a major oil refinery.
Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas said, "If such a request does, indeed, exist, then it changes the situation and we will have to take it into account." The premier said that as the refinery's shares were registered in the Netherlands, any decision would largely depend on legal relations between Russia and that country, and the inter-state agreements they had signed.
However, he said that the Russian request could negatively affect negotiations on the sale of these shares.
A number of companies have expressed an interest in Mazeikiu Nafta, including Russian oil major LUKoil, British-Russian company TNK-BP, America's ConocoPhilips, Swiss oil trader Vitol and the Russian natural gas monopoly, Gazprom.
A Yukos subsidiary, Yukos Finance, currently holds a 53.7% stake in Mazeikiu Nafta, and the Lithuanian government owns 40.66% of the shares.
The Lithuanian authorities are prepared to sell from 10% to 20% of the MN shares to an investor that has its own oil and can give long-term guarantees to deliver at least 8 million metric tons of oil a year for refining and subsequent export through the MN terminal on the Baltic Sea.
The head of the Yukos office in Lithuanian told RIA Novosti that he had only heard about the matter from media reports and was not ready to talk about the Russian claims.
