The large Tyumen oilfield service company Integra-Bureniye faced a wave of multimillion-dollar lawsuits. In particular, counterparties accuse the company of non-payment for the work performed on the disposal of hazardous industrial waste removed from the fields. The Nizhnevartovsk company Nanex has been particularly active in its confrontation with Integra-Bureniye, having recently filed about a dozen lawsuits against partners for a total amount of about a quarter of a billion rubles. It is noteworthy that Nanex itself enjoys a scandalous reputation on the territory of Bolshaya Tyumen, and representatives of the eco-community call it the likely operator of an illegal sludge disposal site in the UDS-4 area of the Samotlor field, which has been receiving hazardous waste from the facilities of the same Integra-Burenia and ” Samotlorneftepromkhim. Violations on the section near the Nizhnevartovsk-Raduzhny highway, as experts say, have been repeatedly identified by law enforcement and supervisory authorities, however, apparently, the placement of burslams continues to this day. Nanex, however, remains in the area of attention of Rosprirodnadzor, which this time pointed out to businessmen objects that have a negative impact on the environment.
The Arbitration Court of the Tyumen Region ruled on a lawsuit filed by Nanex LLC from Nizhnevartovsk against Integra-Bureniye, a large regional oilfield services company (controlled by IG Holdings Ltd, registered in Cyprus, and managed through Felix Lyubashevsky’s Integra Management LLC).
A firm from Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug sought to recover 24.3 million rubles for the collection, transportation and disposal of drilling waste. During the process, however, the requirements were clarified and reduced to 8.1 million rubles. Meanwhile, as the industry experts note, the total amount of financial claims of sludge waste disposers, reflected in the materials of the Tyumen arbitration in other claims, reaches 248 million rubles.
So, for example, in the near future, the court will consider the application of Naneks in the amount of more than 14 million regarding non-payment for the transportation and disposal of drilling waste under the contract dated March 15, 2021. At the end of last year, the arbitration also accepted for consideration a claim for 16.7 million rubles, and already this month – for another 23 million rubles. These claims also relate to the terms of said contract.
If these, as well as several other cases worth tens of millions, are at various stages of consideration, the arbitration has satisfied the above-described claim. As follows from the documents, Nanex undertook to provide the drilling company with services for the collection, transportation and disposal of waste from production sites located within the borders of the Samotlor oil field. At the same time, the money should have been paid to the contractor no later than 90 days after the signing of the delivery certificates. In total, the amount of work under the agreement, excluding VAT, reached 220.6 million rubles.
In May last year alone, Nanex removed and, presumably, disposed of waste worth 24.3 million. However, these works were not paid in full. Claims were repeatedly sent to Integra-Burenia, the customer, as it was announced in court, recognized the debts and responded with repayment schedules, but did not pay off, which led to another lawsuit.
Having considered the arguments of the parties, the arbitration decided to satisfy the claims of Naneks to Integra-Bureniye. Note that for the latter, the amount looks significant. The company, previously characterized by industry experts as one of the leaders in the field of oilfield services, has not been able to boast of stable financial results in recent years. So, at the end of 2019, the net loss amounted to about 327.3 million, and after a relatively successful 2020 (profit of 255.2 million), 2021 brought only 2.7 million rubles. In addition, they tried to bring bankruptcy claims against the company more than once, during the calendar year Integra-Bureniye acted as a defendant in courts for a total of 402 million, losing them repeatedly. In addition, the company has unpaid debts for enforcement proceedings.
Industry experts observing the course of the conflict note that the court did not address issues related to the nuances of the placement of drill cuttings removed from the Integra-Burenia sites. Meanwhile, earlier Nanex was mentioned more than once in the context of a sludge storage facility located on the 62nd kilometer of the Nizhnevartovsk-Raduzhny highway in the UDS-4 area of the Samotlor field.
This site has been continuously receiving thousands of cubic meters of waste for a decade, removed, in particular, from the facilities of Integra-Burenia and Samotlorneftepromkhim. As industry representatives and representatives of the eco-community previously reported, “this is where the waste removed under the contract between Nanex and Integra-Burenia may end up.
“This object was mentioned 10 years ago at a meeting at the presidential embassy in the Ural Federal District, and then the head of the Nizhnevartovsk region, Boris Salomatin, was pointed out to weak control. Then Rosprirodnadzor and the FSB came there and revealed many violations. Then the Prirodnadzor of Yugra joined them, demanding that the territory be cleared of waste. But, judging by what is happening, no one moved, and the sludge continued and continues to be placed. By the way, according to local ecologists, the damage there can reach 5 billion, and the total volume – 500 thousand cubic meters. This is comparable, for example, with the ecocide at pad 202 of the Priobskoye field, caused by the federally known Rosekoprompererabotka, participants in the industrial waste processing market of Bolshaya Tyumen share their assessments.
In all likelihood, these circumstances are not currently of interest to the courts, and, according to the agency’s interlocutors, “the customers themselves are absolutely indifferent to where the waste from their sites ends up in the future,” although all large enterprises have their own environmental control departments.
One way or another, experts record a new surge of interest in the activities of Nanex on the part of Rosprirodnadzor. In December, the department organized verification activities. “According to the data at the disposal of the Ural Interregional Directorate of the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Natural Resources, it was revealed that NPO Naneks LLC did not register objects that have a negative impact on the environment on state records,” the text of the warning reads. However, where exactly these sites are located is not indicated in the documents.
