RUSSIA - e-Trading.

The Russian media group Interfax and Crown Resources, the Swiss-based firm trading commodities in Europe and the Far East, on July 20, 2000 joined forces to create a global e-commerce platform for crude oil and petroleum products. Called Oil-On-Line.com, it will start operations before end-2000 with an initial capital of about $2.9m and will be owned equally by the two companies. Earlier this year Interfax joined Gazprom and Middlesex Holdings, a UK metals trader, in a new steel trading website called EuropeSteel.com. In May Sibneft and Surgutneftegaz (SNG) separately announced plans to set up e-trading ventures. SNG's system will initially focus on procurement and will later concentrate on sales of oil products from its Kirishi refinery. Sibneft's ETS will be for domestic products sales. Earlier in the year Sibneft and Russia's railway ministry, which is responsible for the transport of oil by rail, signed an agreement to set up an ETS for Russia's first energy futures e-market. The other partners in this are Transneft, Transneftproduct and Transtelecom.

On Aug. 10, the tax police raided Sibneft's Moscow HQ. The action seemed to be a direct blow against Roman Abramovich, who has a controlling stake in Sibneft and has been mentioned as one of the targets of President Putin in his campaign to curb the influence of the business "oligarchs" (see who's who in Part 4). Sibneft has teamed up with Yukos and Stroitransgas, a pipeline construction firm with ties to Gazprom, for a September bid for the state's 85% stake in Onako. A rival bidder is LUKoil.