BEIJING, December 12 (RIA Novosti, Alexei Yefimov)-One of China's leading energy companies issued a strongly worded denial Monday that it was interested in acquiring some non-core assets of embattled Russian oil major Yukos.
China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) challenged the accuracy of a report in Shanghai Securities News (Shanghai Zhengquan Bao) last week that claimed its chief executive had said in an interview that the concern was considering buying Yukos assets worth $1 billion.
The CNOOC statement said: "First, Chief Executive Fu Chengyu did not give any interview to any media about this; second, Chief Executive Fu Chengyu did not give an exclusive interview to a Shanghai Zhengquan Bao correspondent; and third, no member of the company's management has ever spoken to any media about an interest in non-core Yukos assets worth $1 billion."
"Our company retains the right to take legal measures against the relevant media," the statement said.
But another newspaper, the Shenzhen Economic Daily put a different slant on the matter. "The statement does not mean that we are not interested in Yukos assets, but that we did not tell a correspondent about this," it cited an anonymous company source as saying.
China's energy companies have constantly been linked with Yukos, and were in particular thought to have been interested in acquiring its core production unit, Yuganskneftegaz, when it went up for auction to pay for the concern's crippling back-tax bill in December 2004. Although state-owned oil company Rosneft eventually bought the company from the obscure auction winner, there were some suggestions that China had lent the company billions of dollars to meet the $9 billion asking price.
Speculation that the CNOOC would renew its interest in the Russian company's assets came after an $18.5 billion bid for American oil company Unocal fell through under pressure from Washington.
