Bashneft privatization is postponed until next year

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Moscow has announced its decision to postpone the sale of a majority stake in state-owned company Bashneft until the next year. Sources differ in their assumptions of what the reason of such a decision may be. While Bloomberg is sure that kremlin was not in favor of Rosneft acquiring its smaller peer, Russian daily Kommersant insists on a conflict between two main bidders being the reason of such a step.

Kommersant cites a government official who said that it is the PM Dmitry Medvedev who is responsible for the delay. The fact is that the situation around bidding had become too tense leading to a conflict in governmental structures. Today there are two main bidders for the stake – Rosneft and Lukoil, with the latter emerging as a winner. However, Bloomberg is citing Russian largest private oil company as saying that the stake is overvalued taking into account the current market situation. The Oilprice.com supposes that in case Bloomberg is right identifying the current market situation as the main reason, privatization may be postponed even longer than 2017.