Igor Sechin: Rosneft is fine with any level of oil prices

Rosneft is fine with any level of oil prices, chief executive Igor Sechin told Kommersant radio station as quoted by news agency TASS. “We manage risks. If prices fall, we will work on increasing our market share,” Sechin said, adding that if prices continued their current slide, Rosneft would focus on maintaining and expanding its market share.

“In fact,” Sechin said, “the first important thing is to maintain market prices. Secondly, this needs to be discussed. I think that the period of time until March 31 will be devoted to preparing universal solutions, not just manual control.” Separately, Sechin told media in Singapore that the oil market was already adjusting to the Iran sanctions, Reuters reported earlier this week, quoting Sechin as saying it would be “silly” to make any price forecasts at the moment when it was uncertain what Washington’s next moves against Tehran would be and what steps other large oil producers would take to mitigate any adverse effects from these moves.

Meanwhile, however, Rosneft is having its own sanction troubles. With U.S. legislators preparing more sanctions against Moscow and state-owned entities, Rosneft is trying to persuade oil trading houses to take on themselves the risk of failed payments because of sanctions. Reuters reported that the company wanted to renegotiate the terms of its contracts with commodity traders and include penalties in case of failed payments next year. “No sanctions … shall terminate or amend any obligations of the parties stated by the contract,” a tender document that Reuters saw stated. One trading house, however, has refused to renegotiate the terms of its existing deal with Rosneft, a source from the house told Reuters. Other Russian oil producers are doing this as well, and are arguing in favor of a currency switch for these payments from the greenback to the euro.