Moscow, October 21, 2003. The Sibneft Board of Directors has approved a recommendation to the scheduled November 20, 2003 extraordinary shareholders meeting on the payment of interim dividends, based on Sibneft’s nine-month operating results.

The board set a total dividend payment amount of 6,922,297,472.94 rubles ($230.6 million). The sum is equivalent to 1.46 rubles ($0.049) per share.

As previously announced, shareholders will be asked at the November 20 meeting to approve interim dividends and to endorse a corporate restructuring in the form of the acquisition of domestic trading company Orion LLC. The ex-dividend date was September 30, 2003 (19:00).