The PJSC Lukoil Oil Company (Russian: Лукойл, romanized: Lukoyl, IPA: [ˈluːkɔɪl] stylized as LUKOIL or ЛУКОЙЛ in Cyrillic script) is a Russian multinational energy corporation headquartered in Moscow, specializing in the business of extraction, production, transport, and sale of petroleum, natural gas, petroleum products, and electricity.
Its new name is the combination of the acronym LUK (initials of the oil-producing cities of Langepas, Uray, Kogalym) and the English word "oil".
[12] In 1995, Lukoil controlled the stakes of nine oil-producing, marketing and service enterprises in Western Siberia, the Urals, and Volgograd Oblast in order to abide by Government Decree No.
This resulted in the control of a network of gas stations in the United States as well as the first time Lukoil enters the American oil market.
[19] In December 2006, Lukoil announced the acquisition of 376 filling stations in six European countries: Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, from ConocoPhillips.
[23] In December 2012, Lukoil bought the Imilor field for ₽50.8 billion in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug to explore and develop the hydrocarbon deposits located there.
[24] In February 2013, Lukoil sold the Odesa Oil Refinery to the Ukrainian "East European Fuel and Energy Company" (VETEK).
[30][31][32] In March 2022, Lukoil's market stock price dropped 95 percent, as a result of international sanctions during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In October 2021, due to ecology risks, the Russian government withdrew the decision to provide the license for geological exploration at Nadezhda field.
[46] * – 49% and 45% shares respectively ‡ do not process Russian crude oil Speaking at a press conference in New York on October 18, 2006, the company's CEO Vagit Alekperov said Lukoil is refusing to build a new refinery in Russia.
At the same time, Lukoil planned to build a large complex in Kalmykia for the processing of natural gas from the North Caspian fields worth over $3 billion.
[49] The subsidiary company Lukoil-Neftekhim specializes in petrochemistry, and operates the Stavrolen (Budyonnovsk), Saratovorgsintez, and the Karpatneftekhim (Kalush, Ukraine) petrochemical plants.
[62] In March 2022, Toby Gati, Roger Munnings and Wolfgang Schüssel left the board of directors due to International sanctions during the Russo-Ukrainian War.
[67] In an effort to increase productivity, Lukoil organized a contract to begin an oil pumping block in the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea.
Taking into account the depth of the operation, around 700 meters, the amount of harm was projected to be minimal, with the majority of the damaged marine life being plankton and benthos.
In particular, the company's oil production in the Baltic Sea near Kaliningrad Oblast was criticized as it is 22 kilometers away from the Curonian Spit, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
[73] On one of the storage ponds of JSC "Lukoil-Volgograd-neftepererabotka" during the period from July 25 to August 8, 1996, the oil sludge was ignited due to the unacceptable conduct of welding operations.
In the residential areas of the Krasnoarmeysky district of Volgograd, located 7 km from the fire, as well as in the nearby settlements - B. and M. Chapurnik, Dubov Gully, Chervlen, Tingut - the content of combustion products in the air also exceeded the maximum permissible concentration.
[citation needed] On April 20, 2012, at the Trebs field, developed jointly by Lukoil and Bashneft, there was an accident that caused significant damage to the natural environment: over a day, continued flowing of oil from the re-opened well, which led to large-scale contamination of the territory.
[82] In November 2009, the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia (FAS) imposed a record fine of ₽6.54 billion on the company for violating antitrust legislation.
As FAS has calculated, these actions led to an increase in prices in the wholesale markets of motor gasoline, diesel fuel, and aviation kerosene in the first half of 2009.
[83] In March 2018, the data firm Cambridge Analytica, tied to the 2016 Trump Campaign, was accused of discussing "political targeting" of American voters with representatives of Lukoil.
[84] "Cambridge Analytica sought to identify mental and emotional characteristics in certain subsets of the American population and worked to exploit them by designing them to activate some of the worst vulnerabilities in people, such as neuroticism, paranoia and racial biases," whistleblower Christopher Wylie told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2018.
[85] With Lukoil, the consulting firm shared election disruption strategies, which included videos and posters intended to demoralise and alarm voters.
[86] Lukoil is on the Sectoral Sanctions Identifications list, has been linked to Russian influence in the past, and CEO Vagit Alekperov, a former oil minister, had made statements suggesting that he considers helping Russia to be a strong political ambition.
[86][87] On February 25, 2010, Lukoil's vice president Anatoliy Barkov [ru] crashed his Mercedes S500 into a Citroën C3 car with doctor Olga Alexandrina and famous obstetrician Vera M. Sidelnikova inside; both women died in the collision.
Blogger Andrei Bocharov announced a mock advertisement of Lukoil based on this accident, and rapper Noize MC wrote the song "Mercedes S666 (Make Way for the Chariot)".
According to the latter, the company's Bourgas refinery did not have timely installed meters for the manufactured fuel (used to determine the amount of excises paid), which, according to officials, Lukoil allegedly underpaid about €250 million to the country's budget.
[97] In 2023 Bulgaria took the decision to force Russian energy companies out of the country, and increased the tax rate to 60% on the Lukoil Neftohim Burgas profits, hoping the plant will be sold.
[100] On 11 September 2014, US President Obama said that the United States would join the EU in imposing tougher sanctions on Russia's financial, energy and defence sectors, following the escalation of Russo-Ukrainian War.