David Jacobashvili’s Petrocas sold 49% of its shares to Rosneft
Georgi Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
The first political event of 2015 in Georgia was a major deal between Petrocas Energy Group and the Russian state company “Rosneft.” Petrocas belongs to billionaire David Jacobashvili. It sold 49% of its shares. The deal caused heavy protests from the opposition and pro-Western experts, who thought it was “breaking into Georgia by the most powerful Russian state corporation.”
It is wrong to say that Russian state companies were absent in Georgia. The UES of Russia bought the Tbilisi SCR system “Telasi” from the American company AES and solved the “historic” problem of stable electric power being provided to the capital in a year. However, even in 2003 supporters of Mikheil Saakshvili stood against the “malicious penetration by Anatoly Chubais’s company of Georgia”, as he was thought to be an author of the concept of the “liberal empire.”
Today they are protesting against Rosneft. At the same time, in both cases private companies have decided to sell their shares profitably to a buyer who was ready to pay big money for it. However, supporters of the former president organize briefings, insisting on cancelling the deal, as it “damages the state interests of Georgia.”
Why did the Russian oil giant decide to buy a packet of Petrocas shares which is not a controlling one? David Jacobashvili’s company owns not only the biggest network of fuel stations in Georgia, Gulf, but also the biggest oil-loading terminal near Poti. In recent years Rosneft used the terminal for transshipment of oil and oil products to Armenia. It seems that Moscow has decided to improve its control over the oil supply line of the state, which has recently entered the Eurasian Economic Union. The geopolitical approach meets the Kremlin’s strategy on building new and reconstructing former communications connecting Russia and the South Caucasus. I mean reconstruction of the railway through Abkhazia and construction of the Avro-Kakheti highway from Dagestan to Eastern Georgia and further to Armenia. The oil product transshipment line is an important component of providing vitality in Armenia. Tbilisi media even suppose that Rosneft is going to buy a controlling interest of Petrocas, but the vice-president of the Georgian company, Niko Mchedlishvili, told Vestnik Kavkaza that this is not so: “The controlling interest still belongs to David Jacobashvili.”
It is a secret how much the deal costs. Negotiations on selling the controlling or blocking interest of Petrocas Energy Group started in autumn 2013, when Armenia rejected signing the association agreement with the EU and decided to join the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, but at the same time Yerevan raised the question of “stable communication lines with the countries of the Customs Union under absence of common borders.”
However, Tbilisi considers the story from a different point of view – it is an attempt by the Russian giant (almost the Russian state itself) to “gain the most important communications and the Black Sea shore of the country.” According to one of the leaders of Saakashvili’s party, the MP Zurab Japaridze, the deal with Petrocas is only the beginning of “a big process”, and if nobody makes the authorities cancel the deal, “in future Moscow will have no obstacles at all.”
The opposition states that Rosneft is actively working in Abkhazia, violating Georgian law on occupied territories. From a formal point of view, it could be an argument for rejection of registration of the purchase and redistribution of interests. However, it seems Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili doesn’t intend to take such a radical step, as Moscow could consider it a return to the times of Saakashvili’s rule with his confrontational logic, i.e. “a forced breaking” of the deal could lead to the reinstatement of a Russian embargo on Georgian goods.
