MOSCOW — The two energy companies at the heart of Russia’s economy are on the verge of a historic reversal that could shift the balance of power in the Kremlin’s corridors subtly.Gazprom, the world’s largest natural gas producer, is worth just $3.3bn more than Rosneft, Russia’s biggest oil company. That premium, down from more than $250bn in 2008, may disappear altogether as the five-year slide in Gazprom’s market value continues, according to analysts from Otkritie Financial Corp, Aton and Raiffeisen Bank."Rosneft may catch up with Gazprom by market value as early as this year," said Andrey Polischuk, an analyst at Raiffeisen Bank in Moscow. The state-run gas exporter faces rising competition and the lowest prices in more than a decade in its main European market, on top of billions of dollars of spending commitments on new pipelines, he said.Since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 1999, he has used development of the nation’s oil and gas wealth to rebuild after the economi...
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