YUKOS president, "Russia should be No.1 on European oil market"

Russia should become "player number one" on the European oil market, YUKOS President Mikhail Khodorkovsky said in an interview on the RTR channel. "This is out traditional market and we should be a leader on it", he pointed out. Khodorkovsky was quoted as saying that Russia should convince European buyers of the fact that Russia was a stable partner and there would be no troubles with us. The situation with oil exports to the USA is more complicated, Khodorkovsky believes. "We have no deep-water ports and the Far Eastern ports are too far away from the main areas of oil production. That is why we will be able to export oil to the USA, only if oil prices are very high. In this event we will be able to cover transportation costs. However we can export oil to the USA from oil fields in the Sakhalin island ", he said.