RUSSIA - Profile - Igor Sechin.

A presidential deputy chief of staff and a key member of the Siloviki, as well as a former colleague of Putin as a KGB agent, Sechin was in July appointed as chairman of RosNeft's board of directors. RosNeft, a state-owned company, wants to get YuganskNefteGaz (YNG), a Yukos unit which produces more than 1m b/d.

Sechin's new appointment came one week after the government announced that it would sell YNG to recoup taxes owned by Yukos, which could go up to $16.5 bn. If Sechin, who has been behind the move on Yukos since mid-2003, gets YNG to be acquired by RosNeft, the latter would become the second biggest oil producer in Russia with a capacity of 1.5m b/d. There is also speculation that the Siloviki will get RosNeft, thus expanded, to be merged with Gazprom in order to national super-giant producing oil and gas. Gazprom also intends to expand by acquiring oil assets to be shed from Yukos.