MOSCOW (Sputnik) — US companies show a huge interest in cooperation with Russia in its oil and gas sector, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.
"Then there is another area of activity – economic interaction between Russia and the United States. Right now, for example, it has already been made public that we signed a large deal to privatize one of our biggest oil and gas companies, Rosneft, which sold 19.5 percent of its shares to a consortium of Qatar’s sovereign fund and Glencore, one of the world’s largest traders," Putin told the Nippon TV channel and and the Yomiuri newspaper in an interview posted on the Kremlin website.
"We know for sure that US companies, as well as Japanese ones, by the way, are keenly interested in cooperation in Russia’s oil and gas sector, in joint work. This has immense significance for world energy markets and will directly affect the whole world economy," he said.
The buyer was a consortium of Swiss trader Glencore and Qatar's sovereign wealth fund (Qatar Investment Authority). The sum of the transaction amounted to 692 billion rubles, or 10.2 billion euros. The budget will as a result receive 710.8 billion rubles, or 10.5 billion euros. Completion of the transaction settlement is expected in mid-December.
