Rosneft forecasts almost $14bn profits in 2013

Russia's biggest oil company, state-controlled Rosneft, on Tuesday forecast that its net profits for 2013 would increase to almost $14 billion, helped by the acquisition and consolidation of BP's former joint venture TNK-BP. "At the current time, net profit is going to be 439 billion rubles ($13.8 billion)," Rosneft's powerful chief executive Igor Sechin told Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Russian news agencies reported. If confirmed, the earnings would mark a substantial improvement on Rosneft's already record net profits in 2012 of 342 billion rubles ($10.7 billion). Sechin forecast that for the current year, Rosneft would produce 207 million tonnes of oil and 42 billion cubic metres of gas. A Rosneft spokeswoman confirmed to AFP that Sechin was presenting a united business plan for the whole of 2013 that took account of the company's recent acquisitions, including TNK-BP. The TNK-BP deal made Rosneft the world's biggest oil company by production, overtaking ExxonMobil. TNK-BP was fully integrated into Rosneft earlier this year and fully consolidated for the first time in second quarter earnings. Rosneft, which became Russia's biggest oil company after hoovering up the assets of the now defunct oil major Yukos of jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in disputed auctions, acquired TNK-BP with the aim of becoming a global energy giant.