VETEK still negotiating with Rosneft on Lisichansk refinery buy
KYIV. May 24 (Interfax) - Eastern-European Fuel and Energy Company (VETEK) continues to negotiate with Russian oil major Rosneft over the purchase of Lisichansk Oil Refinery (LINIK, Lugansk Region), VETEK owner Serhiy Kurchenko said in an interview with the journal Korrespondent.
"We are modernizing Odessa Oil Refinery, launching it, and are conducting negotiations over Lisichansk Oil Refinery. We are hoping to strike some kind of an agreement with Rosneft," Kurchenko said.
He denied reports that the price tag on the purchase of Odessa Oil Refinery was $300 million, but did not say how much it cost. "It is not simply a secret, nondisclosure is written into the agreement with Lukoil ," he said. He also denied that VETEK's share of the domestic market for liquefied natural gas (LNG) is about 70%.
The group's filling stations will in the next three or four months be joined under a single brandname, Kurchenko said.
Lisichansk Oil Refinery, owned by Rosneft, has been idle since March of last year. It is the 'youngest' Ukrainian refinery, with processing capacity of around 7 million tonnes of crude oil annually. The facility can produce Euro-4 standard fuel and Euro-5 diesel fuel. Dmytro Firtash's Group DF is also interested in acquiring the refinery.
Early this past March, Lukoil announced the sale to VETEK of Odessa Oil Refinery, which it had owned since 1999 and which has designed capacity of 2.8 million tonnes per year.
VETEK trades in liquefied and natural gases, oil products, goods for the oil and gas sector, and runs some 150 filling stations. It operates and has assets in Ukraine and a number of other countries. Main shareholder Kurchenko became the owner of the football club Metallist (Kharkyv) at the end of last year.