ARMO is up for sale

Tirana, 14 April 2008. Everyone knew that ARMO was for sale. Probably, the first oil and gas company to consider such a purchase was the little-known-in-Albania, Hungarian MOL. The news was first published in the Hungarian newspapers; and it seems the Hungarians are serious about buying ARMO. Then, in mid-March, the Albanian Minister of Economy, Genc Ruli, confirmed that MOL was one of the companies bidding to purchase ARMO.
However, it seems strange that speculation is rising about the real owners of the project called “MOL buys ARMO”. According to an article in the Albanian daily, “Gazeta Shqiptare”, the real “mastermind” and financial backer is the Kremlin. The newspaper alleges that MOL is some kind of Russian stooge and is part of the Putin plan to control Europe through control of energy resources. The newspaper provides some “strong” evidence to substantiate its claims. First is an article, written in 2003, in the Croatian newspaper, “Nacional”. Then, MOL bought 25 percent+1 share of the Croatian INA for no less than Euro 440 million, although the shares were probably worth no more than Euro 380 million. Nacional speculated, at that time, that Yukos was behind the MOL offensive into the Croatian market. The Russian plan, wrote the newspaper, was “to bring all its companies together: Sloneft from Slovakia, MOL, INA, and Romanian, as well as Slovenian and Serbian oil companies, and then sell off this central European oil concern to a large multinational company”.
The second piece of evidence is a joint venture between MOL and Yukos to explore and develop the 145 million barrel Zapadno-Malobaik oil field in Western Siberia. Oil production from the field was expected to reach 55,000 bbl/d by 2005. Rosneft later replaced Yukos in the join-venture. However, there is nothing strange with this agreement. You can google Gazprom and Shtokman or any other major oil and gas field.
We can provide a third bit of evidence. The Energy Information Agency, a statistical division of the U.S. Department of Energy, reported in June 2004 that Yukos, “Ůcontrols a reported 10% of MOL (Yukos stake in MOL has not been confirmed, however).”
However, since 2003/2004, the Yukos/Rosneft/Gazprom connection has failed to materialise. The Russian-owned giant, Central European oil concern, was never created and nothing was sold to a large multinational company. Yukos itself is part of the history.