| Vagit Alekperov bought almost 800 gas stations in the USA before his trip to Iraq LUKOIL is strengthening its position in the American petroleum products market. Yesterday it became known that the company acquired almost 800 gas stations in two states from ConocoPhilips, and now LUKOIL owns more than 2 thousand gas stations in the United States. Thus, LUKOIL has become a major player working for the benefit of America, which strengthens the company’s position in negotiations with the pro-American administration of Iraq (to be held in February in Baghdad) to assert its rights to develop the West Qurna-2 field. True, Vagit Alekperov will have a hard time in the American market, analysts note: in order for the “American project” to be profitable, the company must implement all its plans to establish supplies of petroleum products to America. For now, LUKOIL is just beginning to implement these projects.
LUKOIL acquired 795 stations in the states of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the company said, the transaction amount was $265.75 million. Of this, $50 million will be paid by LUKOIL itself, and the rest will be financed through a six-year loan arranged and provided by the bank Lehman Brothers. The network's annual sales volume is 1.2 billion gallons (about 3.3 million tons). LUKOIL sells another 2.4 million tons at existing gas stations in the United States. In 2000, the company bought 1,300 gas stations from Getty Petroleum for $71 million. As it turned out later, the low price of the asset was due to the fact that the land under most of the gas stations did not become the company's property. Yesterday LUKOIL did not say whether the situation repeated itself this time.
As noted by AVK-Analitika analyst Maria Radina, “the American network is forced to purchase petroleum products for sale in the United States from third parties, which causes unprecedented costs for the purchase of oil and petroleum products for vertically integrated companies, so it can be said with a high degree of probability that Currently, LUKOIL's sales system in America is unprofitable. After all, the high price of purchasing petroleum products neutralizes the economic effect of their sale through a network of gas stations.” The expert is confident that LUKOIL management will be able to change the situation only if it is possible to arrange supplies to this region of petroleum products produced at the company’s Russian refineries, which will become possible only after 2005 after the completion of the modernization of oil refining capacities and the commissioning of the second stage of the terminal in Vysotsk .
However, LUKOIL says that income from the use of new assets will fall within the 15 percent internal profitability that the company set for its projects last year. According to the vice-president of the holding Leonid Fedun, LUKOIL oil products will begin to arrive in New York in May through the terminal in Vysotsk (Leningrad region). It will be launched in March and by the end of the year it will be able to handle 2.5 million tons of petroleum products; in 2005, its capacity will be increased to 4.7 million tons, and in the future the company plans to increase it to 11 million tons per year.
This year LUKOIL will complete the modernization of the plant in Burgas (the Russian holding owns 58% of the Bulgarian enterprise). The company also expects to increase the capacity of the terminal in Varandey (Nenets Autonomous Okrug) - first to 12 million tons of oil and petroleum products, and in the future to 18 million tons. “We expect to place this volume in North America,” Interfax quotes Mr. Fedun as saying. In addition, LUKOIL plans to lease the capacity of one of the refineries in Europe. “By refining oil, we will be able to leave diesel fuel in Europe and export gasoline to the USA. We are currently carrying out such preliminary work,” says the manager. Denis REBROV |
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