MOSCOW, April 4 (UPI) -- Italian energy companies Eni SpA and Enel SpA paid $58.3 billion for a stake in Russia's bankrupt OAO Yukos Oil Co., Eni said Wednesday.
The assets sold at auction include a 20 percent stake in Gazprom Neft -- Russia's fifth largest oil company, producing 900,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day -- and three companies in northwestern Russia's sparse Yamalo-Nenets region just south of the Arctic circle: OAO Arctic Gas Co., ZAO Urengoil Inc. and OAO Neftegaztechnologia, Eni said on behalf of Enel.
It was the first time foreign companies purchased Yukos assets.
Eni gave OAO Gazprom, the world's biggest natural-gas extractor, the right to buy its Gazprom Neft stake and 51 percent of the three other companies within two years, Eni said.
Eni and Enel beat Russian rivals NeftTradeGroup, a subsidiary of state-controlled OAO Rosneft Oil Co., and OAO Novatek, Russia's largest independent natural gas producer.
Yukos, once Russia's second-largest oil company, owes the government $26 billion in back taxes. The company contends the tax claims are revenge because former Chief Executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky funded President Vladimir Putin's political opponents before the 2004 presidential election.
Khodorkovsky is serving an eight-year sentence in a Siberian prison camp for fraud and tax evasion.
