Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 14
By Maksim Tsurkov – Trend:
Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR and Russia’s LUKOIL PJSC are discussing the possibility of joint acquisition of new assets in the fuel market of Turkey, Anadolu Agency quoted Vadim Vorobiev, LUKOIL’s senior Vice President for sales and supplies.
According to him, Turkish retail fuel market remains attractive for LUKOIL, which actively promotes its interests in this sector of the Turkish economy.
Russian company has already allocated up to $1 billion for this purpose, Vorobiev told a group of Turkish journalists in Moscow.
Turkey’s petroleum products market is of strategic importance to LUKOIL, noted the senior Vice President.
“Our company is studying opportunities to expand its share in the Turkish market. We discussed with SOCAR representatives the issue of acquiring the assets of third companies in the Turkish market. A concrete decision on this issue hasn’t been made yet,” he added.
Vorobiev said that today the company operates in the oil, gas and petrochemical sectors of the economies of 40 countries and has recently started to show interest in the field of energy supply.
He went on to say that LUKOIL occupies five to six percent of the Turkish retail fuel market.
“In 2000-2010, it was more profitable to work in the Turkish market than in Europe. Later on profits decreased due to the changes made in local legislation,” noted LUKOIL official.
Vorobiev also drew attention to the crisis on the world energy market.
“We don’t plan to expand activities in Turkey in the next 3-4 years due the crisis. Nonetheless, we are ready to cooperate with other companies operating on the Turkish market on the issue of distributors’ network,” he added.
LUKOIL owns a 10-percent stake in the consortium for the development of the giant Shah Deniz gas field in Azerbaijan.
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