LUKoil also plans to extend its gas station network in Finland, to enhance lubricant factory output and to increase liquefied gas sales as well as small wholesale shipments of furnace fuel.
LUKoil has been already reported to acquire last March Finnish companies Oy Teboil Ab and Suomen Petrooli Oy, which own 289 gas stations and 132 D points - detached diesel fuel surface containers and pumps - and sell oil products by wholesale, manufacture and sell lubricants.
This deal has given LUKoil direct access to the Finnish market of the oil products ultimate consumer and prospects to get additional profits from deliveries of ecological diesel fuels with low sulfur content, produced at the Perm refinery hydrocracking installation.
The LUKoil marketing area spreads to 18 countries, including Russia, the CIS (Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine), European states (Bulgaria, Hungary, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Serbia, Rumania, the Czech Republic, Estonia and Finland) and the USA, with 5,400 gas stations.
The LUKoil retail chain in Russia at the end of 2004 was responsible for 1,450 own and leased as well as 262 franchised gas stations.
In 2004, the LUKoil gas stations throughout the world marketed about 8.4 million tons of oil products, including 2.8 million tons in Russia, 1.8 million tons in Europe and the CIS and 3.8 million tons in the USA.
