The Board of Directors of OAO Oil and Gas Company RussNeft has approved its President Mikhail Gutseriev?s declaration about deliberate laying down of the power of the president of Oil and Gas Company RussNeft.

The Board of Directors has appointed Senior Vice-President of Oil and Gas Company RussNeft Oleg Gordeyev the acting president of the Company, an official statement of the RussNeft press office says.

According to the statement, OAO Oil and Gas Company RussNeft and its subsidiaries will keep working in their normal planned order. Investment and production programs of the holding will be implemented in full in accordance with the obligations undertaken earlier.

OAO Oil and Gas Company RussNeft confirm that on July 27, 2007 the structures of the company Bazovy Element filed an application at the Federal Antimonopoly Service for purchasing of the controlling interest in Oil and Gas Company RussNeft. Pursuant to the Russian legislation Antimonopoly Service is to take a decision within a month.

Mikail Gutseriev temporarily suspends his business activity, resigns from all the business projects and is going to devote himself to scientific activity at the territory of the Russian Federation.

The company claims that all the charity projects initiated by the president of OAO Oil and Gas Company RussNeft earlier in the field of children?s health service, help to invalids and low-income families, to Russian Orthodox Church and other confessions will be implemented in full.

RussNeft is a vertically integrated oil holding that enter the top-ten of the Russian oil and gas companies. Total deposits extracted by the company exceed 630mn tons. Annual extraction totals 17mn tons.
sections: Economics