From what was once Yukos, Russia builds state-owned oil giant

President Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin has turned Rosneft, the once-forlorn state oil company, into an energy giant almost entirely by giving Yukos’s assets a fresh coat of paint.

On Tuesday, a new phase in that effort began with the auction of the company’s remaining assets, following a declaration of bankruptcy forced by Rosneft.

The auction signaled the final stage for Yukos, which is a few months from disappearing into Russia’s state energy industry after a prosecutorial campaign that began nearly four years ago.
The auction also represented another milestone in Putin’s campaign to bring Russian energy resources under state control. It was conducted, critics say, in a familiar pattern of Kremlin machinations where a formal, public and ostensibly legal process is accompanied by secretive negotiations in which the Kremlin calls the shots.

“This is just an illusion, an imitation of process,” Mikhail Kasyanov, Putin’s former prime minister, said in an interview.

International Herald Tribune