Tokarev new president of Transneft

Russia's oil pipeline monopoly Transneft said it had elected Nikolai Tokarev, the former head of state-run overseas oil vehicle Zarubezhneft and a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, as its new president.
Tokarev replaced Semyon Vainshtok.

Russian media had speculated Tokarev and Putin were close allies when they served together as KGB spies in Germany. According to Tokarev's official biography, he was born in 1950 and worked in the mining business before joining the Kremlin administration in the 1990s.
In 1999, Tokarev became Transneft's vice-president for security before his appointment as head of Zarubezhneft in 2000, a company whose biggest project is a joint oil production venture in Vietnam.

Analysts said Tokarev would face a challenge to keep the huge company's costs under control.
"Many of Transneft's projects can not be viewed as just economic projects as they also have political importance. So Tokarev will have to show he has political weight," Maxim Shein from Broker Credit Service told.

During his seven years in office, Vainshtok has managed nearly to double Transneft's export network, establishing Russia as the world's second-largest oil exporter after Saudi Arabia. His most ambitious project was the construction of Russia's first pipeline to Asia, reaching out to China and the Pacific coast, which is due to come on stream at the end of 2008.
The project's costs have already soared to over $ 11 bn from the initial $ 6 bn.

Vainshtok resigned in September after he was moved by Putin to head the state Olympic corporation, which will oversee preparations for the Winter Olympics in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi in 2014.