FT: Lukoil Has No Future
1- 12.11.2025, 12:52
- 3,466
The company may be given to Putin's associate Sechin.
After the U.S. refused to approve the sale of Lukoil's foreign enterprises to oil trader Gunvor, the company is facing the threat of losing both its international assets and its Russian business. In other countries, authorities can take away its refineries, gas stations and oilfields to keep them running, while in Russia Lukoil has long had the eye of Vladimir Putin's longtime associate, Rosneft chief Igor Sechin.
Without the international division, which Lukoil has actively developed over two decades and turned into an efficient, profitable business, its prospects in the Rosneft-dominated Russian market appear extremely limited. "Domestically, everything is given to Rosneft and Gazprom Neft, and the foreign market for Lukoil is now closed, opposition politician Vladimir Milov, who was deputy energy minister in the early 2000s, told Financial Times: "Lukoil has no future in business. The company has clipped its wings."
Foreign players, after the failure of the Gunvor deal, may offer to buy out some of Lukoil's assets, which together are valued at 14 billion euros. But its owners are "already preparing for the fact that their assets can simply be taken away" by the authorities of the countries where they are located, an insider on the Russian oil market told the newspaper. It is also actively circulating rumors that state-owned Rosneft may finally gain control of Russia's largest private oil company, thus completing the transfer of the bulk of the oil industry into state hands that took place under Putin.
Representatives of the Russian energy sector say that so far Putin has repeatedly blocked Sechin's attempts to take over a competitor; but some of them believe that the Rosneft head may now go for a decisive assault. One former employee of the state-owned company told the FT.
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