Oao Yukos Oil Co, Russia's biggest oil exporter, plans to boost crude deliveries to global markets 17 percent this year to capture rising world prices after the country, the world's No. 2 oil supplier, built new pipelines.

　　Exports will rise to 57.7 million tons (1.15 million barrels a day), up from 49.2 million tons shipped last year, said the company in an e-mailed statement. At the same time, it plans to cut oil products exports 3.8 percent to 11.4 million tons after it cleared stockpiles last year.

　　"We will be increasing our market share," Chief Executive Officer Simon Kukes said at a meeting of Yukos senior management in Moscow. "We will continue being leaders."

　　Moscow-based Yukos plans to pump 11 percent more oil to 1.8 million barrels a day this year, more than produced by ConocoPhillips, the third-largest US oil company, said Kukes. Yukos extracts a fifth of Russia's output, the world's second-largest after Saudi Arabia.

　　Yukos is boosting oil exports after Russia, which last year had a 800,000- barrels-a-day shortfall of export-pipeline capacity, more than doubled crude loading at its Baltic Sea port of Primorsk. At the same time, domestic oil prices are less than a half of the prices in Western Europe.

　　Yukos had to ship about 19.6 million tons in rail cars for export, losing about US$40 per ton (US$5.46 a barrel) as railroad tariffs are higher than fees charged by OAO Transneft, Russia's oil pipeline monopoly, said Pyotr Zolotaryov, acting president of ZAO Yukos Refining and Marketing.

　　Yukos plans to increase investments in projects 12 percent to US$1.9 billion this year under the US generally accepted accounting principles. The company on Thursday said it planned to raise spending 1 percent to the same level, up from the amount approved by the board for last year, indicating it fell short of its 2003 investment plans.

　　Yukos and OAO Sibneft are being run as separate companies, while Yukos shareholders and former Sibneft owners, led by billionaire Roman Abramovich, seek to unwind a US$13.9 billion merger completed last October, according to Kukes. Neither Yukos management nor the board of directors are involved in talks with Sibneft, Kukes said.

　　The combination fell apart after former Yukos Chief Executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky was charged with tax evasion and fraud and sent to prison. He denies the charges.

　　Russian authorities have also accused Yukos of evading US$3.4 billion of taxes and opened a probe of its oil production rights. The company denies tax evasion claims.

　　Yukos has scrapped plans to sell eurobonds, and it won't use loans to finance its operations, Bruce Misamore, chief financial officer at the company, said at a press briefing. Yukos may return to borrowing after the situation with Sibneft is resolved and the government eases pressure on the company.

　　Of the total investment volume, Yukos plans to spend US$586 million in refining units and expanding its marketing network this year. It plans to expand by 3.4 percent to 1,158 its number of filling stations, Zolotaryov said.

　　(Bloomberg News)