The state took away from private shareholders a fairly successful enterprise engaged in oil and gas production.
The National Agency of Ukraine for the identification, search and management of assets obtained from corruption and other crimes (ARMA), together with the Ukrnafta company, are misleading the government, not noticing the stop in the functioning of Ukrnaftobureniya assets. This has serious negative consequences for the country's energy security.People's Deputy Alexey Kucherenko reported this on his Facebook page. According to him, more than six months have passed since the stop of Ukrnaftodrilling.
“The inactivity of the authorities is once again astonishing. Today, the anniversary of one adventure, under beautiful slogans, has become a powerful blow to the country’s energy security. More than a year ago, the state took away from private shareholders a fairly successful enterprise engaged in oil and gas production – Ukrnaftoburenie. He produced 0.6 billion cubic meters of gas annually at the Sakhalin field. This is a lot, especially in the current conditions, when we are critically short of energy resources,” the people’s deputy noted.
Kucherenko noted that this asset was seized due to such a legal mechanism as “transfer of seized property to management.” He explained that the prosecutor’s office, which since 2014 had been in charge of the pre-trial investigation in an actually different case, asked the investigator, the judge of the Pechersky Court, to seize material evidence – shares of Ukrnaftobureniya, they say, the latter illegally received a special permit to use the subsoil of the Sakhalin field. The court arrested the shares (even twice, the second time – the next day after the arrest was canceled by the investigator and the judge of the same court due to groundlessness).
According to the people's deputy, after this the shares were transferred to ARMA. In turn, ARMA had to evaluate this asset (involving a subject of valuation activities on a competitive basis) and transfer it to a person also determined based on the results of the competition for management.
Kucherenko emphasized that in the ARMA law there is an exception to this rule and in exceptional cases assets can be transferred to a specific person without holding a competition based on a government decision. According to him, using this norm, ARMA and, by that time, the already state-owned Ukrnafta, represented by its director Sergei Koretsky, initiated the Cabinet of Ministers’ decision to transfer the shares of Ukrnaftobureniya to the management of Ukrnafta under a special procedure (without a competition).
According to People's Deputy, after Ukrnaftoburye lost its license as a result of a court decision, the operation of the Sakhalin field was stopped. He noted that this happened on December 1, 2023.
Kucherenko said that he recently received a response from the head of ARMA Elena Duma. He quoted her answer: “As of July 10, 2024, a crisis situation arose with the interruption of the industrial development of the Sakhalin field, the suspension of the functioning of assets transferred to ARMA for management. This led to an emergency situation in the energy sector and a lack of revenue to the state budget of Ukraine from the management of these assets.”
“So what happens, what they tried to avoid by transferring Ukrnaftaburenie to Ukrnafta (stopping gas and oil production at the Sakhalin field) has happened? In my opinion, this should have already become the basis for ARMA to initiate the issue of changing the manager. However, ARMA not only did not resort to this, but also, judging by the content of the letter and the copies of certificates on the results of monitoring the effectiveness of asset management added to it, is “playing along” with Ukrnafta, – the MP noted.
According to him, the certificate of 05.12.2023 does not mention the circumstances at all, and the certificate of 28.12.2023 only states the cancellation of the court decision on the basis of which the special permit was obtained and the reversal of its execution, but there is not a single word about the resulting stoppage of production. In addition, all certificates for December 2023 – May 2024 indicate that there is no information on the elimination of negative circumstances.
“There are several more interesting nuances in Elena Duma’s letter. It turns out that in February of this year, Ukrnafta addressed ARMA with a letter in which it noted that the 7 arrested shares of Ukrnaftobureniya (this is 0.0118% of the authorized capital) were not transferred to management. It is this circumstance that “does not allow effective management of assets and quick decision-making on issues falling within the exclusive competence of the general meeting of shareholders of the said company, in particular on the issue of distribution of dividends (part of net profit) and their payment to the state budget of Ukraine.” So it became clear to everyone what did not allow Ukrnafta to prevent the stoppage of production – the absence of 7 shares,” he emphasized.
However, according to Kucherenko, this formulation also reveals the real purpose of this “special operation” to transfer to management – the desire to gain access to the profits earned by the preliminary composition of managers and, by directing it to the state budget, receive their 10% “management fee”. According to the people's deputy, we are talking about almost 20 billion hryvnia.
“I think that this is enough to understand why it is necessary to urgently take Ukrnafteburyenie away from the management of Ukrnafte and either return it to its owners, or announce a competition involving real professionals, while simultaneously auditing the impact of current “good governance”. Of course, very serious questions arise for the leadership of ARMA, which, unfortunately, has “lost touch with reality” a little and frankly does not notice that the existence of Ukrnaftobureniya, one of the most successful mining enterprises in recent years, is actually under threat? summed up the people's deputy.