Financial Times: Kiev’s big shale gas tender kicks off with a whiff of controversy

It’s ramping up to be the biggest tender Ukraine has ever held and a potential game-changer for an economy struggling to break its dependency on increasingly expensive imports of Russian natural gas.

But privatisation is controversial in Ukraine, where officials have been accused of a lack of transparency and of rigging sales in favour of local oligarchs.

People in Ukraine’s government say companies such as Royal Dutch Shell, Russian-British TNK-BP, America’s ExxonMobil and Italy’s Eni are considering bids to look for shale gas and other unconventional deposits. Tenders for production sharing agreements for exploration and production rights in two vast regions were announced last week.

The tenders have provoked arguments over the participation of a little-known Ukrainian service company called SPK-Geoservice. At the Adam Smith Ukrainian Energy Forum held in Kiev this week, bidders and their lawyers were scrambling to find out who is behind it.  MORE (registration required)