Five companies previously owned by Rosneft were taken over by Eduard Khudainatov's Independent Oil and Gas Company, including Varyeganneftegaz and his subsidiary Severo-Varyeganskoye LLC. The company would not comment on these changes. Apparently, the deals were made within the frameworks of Rosneft's assets portfolio optimization, which includes replacing some of them with higher-quality assets and also filling the resource base of the new Vostok Oil project.