When leading the company, Mnatsakanyan signed an agreement with the Norwegian company Beta Drilling AS on a three-year lease of the Murmanskaya jackup rig. After Mnatsakanyan resigned from his post in early 2009, the new company leadership quickly sued the former director for mismanagement. According to the current company leader Vyacheslav Urmancheyev, Mnatsakanyan leased several of the company’s key assets to foreign companies to prices far below the market level.
A local city court in Murmansk this week consented with the company and sentenced Mnatsakanyan to conditional three years of jail. In addition, he will have to pay a one billion RUB fine to his former employer, RIA Novosti reports. Mnatsakanyan rejects any guilt and has appealed the case. Mnatsakanyan also has a background as member of the Murmansk Regional Duma.
According to Rigzone.com, the agreement on the “Murmanskaya” rig included a charter hire during mobilization, re-activation and demobilization of 4000 USD per day, while the charter hire of 25,000 USD per day when the unit is working under a drilling contract. It is expected that Beta Drilling, now owned by the Sinvest company, made significantly bigger sums on the rig.
The case with the “Murmanskaya” rig is not the only controversial case where Oleg Mnatsakanyan is involved. As previously reported byBarentsObserver, the former company leader also leased out the drilling ship “Valentin Shashin” to a price far below the market level. Also then, a Norwegian company was involved.
According to an agreement signed in 2005, the Norwegian-based company Venture Drilling AS was granted an agreement on the drilling ship with a bareboat charter committing Venture Drilling to pay 20-25.000 USD in rental fee per day. That is far too little, critics of the deal argue. Venture Drilling meanwhile reportedly makes 400.000 USD per day on the vessel. The agreement has a duration of five years, with Venture Drilling having an option on another six two-year periods, altogether 17 years.
Venture Drilling, a company owned by Petrolia Drilling, renamed the vessel to “Venture Deep”, and sent it to Angola for drilling operations. The Murmansk-based oil and gas exploration company later took the Norwegian company to court to get the bareboat charter cancelled.
Read also: Venture Drilling vs. Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka in court
Following the scandals, the Federal Property Management Agency disallowed Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka to hire its rigs to foreign companies, resulting in the two rigs Kolskaya and Murmanskaya in 2009 lying idle in the port of Murmansk without contracts. The company subsequently got its revenues dramatically reduced, while debts were mounting.
The company crisis was one of the reasons why speculations ran high about a possible takeover of the company by state-owned Zarubezhneft
Read also: Murmansk oil company a step closer merger
According to the website of Arktikmorneftegazrazvedka (AMNGR), the company owns a total of 25 petroleum service vessels, including the drilling ship ”Valentin Shashin”. In addition, the company owns the “Kolskaya” and ”Murmanskaya” jackup rigs. More than 900 people are employed in the company, which has its headquarters in downtown Murmansk.
AMNGR has been a pioneer on the Russian Arctic shelf. Since its establishment in 1979, the company has discovered 15 oil, gas and gas condensate with reserves amounting to 6,8 billion tons of oil equivalents, the company informs.
