Rosneft confident can refinance, partly repay debt

MOSCOW, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Russia's largest oil firm Rosneft (ROSN.MM) plans to refinance a large chunk of its massive debt in 2008 and will also use cashflows to partly reduce the leverage, vice-president for finance said on Wednesday.

Rosneft is the most indebted Russian oil firm with total debt amounting to around $28 billion, including $25 billion to financial institutions, which arose from aggressive borrowing in the past years as Rosneft bought assets of bankrupt firm YUKOS.

"The company continues to perform well, the fundamentals in our industry are good, credit capacity on the balance sheet remains strong, therefore we see substantial interest from various markets for our debt and we are preparing a number of options," Peter O'Brien told Reuters in an interview.

"Our business plan contemplates some free cashflow to reduce the debt as well as refinancing most of the bridge facility."

"We do see demand from a wide range of credit markets whether its the bank market in Europe or in Asia or in Russia. We are also contemplating the Eurobond market and some structured transactions," said O'Brien. (Reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov and Tanya Mosolova; editing by Gleb Bryanski)