| The official headquarters of Eural Transgas, a gas-trading company that handles Russian energy company Gazprom's gas-transit business between Turkmenistan and Ukraine. |
IT IS A slightly run-down but otherwise unremarkable residential block in the middle-class part of Cluj-Napoca, the capital of the Transylvania region of Romania. From the outside there is not much to distinguish the three apartments in the building from their neighbours.
But they are the official headquarters of Eural Transgas, a gas-trading company that handles Russian energy company Gazprom's gas-transit business between Turkmenistan and Ukraine. The neighbours might be interested to learn that the firm behind those anonymous doors earned up to a billion dollars in fees last year.
On the day Euromoney drops by, no-one answers the doorbell. But it's known that the company is an active player in the high-level wheeling and dealing of eastern Europe's energy business. In June, British company JKX Oil & Gas announced plans to buy a stake in Eural Transgas to enable it to export gas produced by Ukrainian company Poltava, which is partly owned by JKX, beating out Gazprom, which also expressed an interest in buying the stake.