Italian oil and gas group Eni has agreed to sell its stake in natural gas producer SeverEnergia to Russia's Novatek and Gazprom Neft for $2.94 billion.
The deal is likely to increase tensions between Russia's oil barons, already heightened by the $1.8 billion sale earlier this month of utility Enel's stake in SeverEnergia to Kremlin-controlled Rosneft.
SeverEnergia stakeholder Gennady Timchenko, a co-owner of Novatek had said the Enel stake in SeverEnergia was still of interest to him.
In a statement Eni, the biggest gas customer of Russia's Gazprom, said it would be paid in cash when the deal was completed and would exit upstream development in Siberia.
Eni originally bought the stake for $600 million.
SeverEnergia is expected to produce 36 billion cubic meters of gas and liquids by 2017.
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