Turkey’s Cengiz Holding Not Backing Out of Plans to Purchase Lukoil Refinery in Bulgaria with SOCAR
Turkey’s Cengiz Holding has no intentions to withdraw from plans to purchase the Lukoil Neftohim Burgas oil refinery in Bulgaria from Lukoil jointly with the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijani Republic (SOCAR), Turkish publication Patronlar Dunyası reported.
The publication wrote that Cengiz and SOCAR had previously submitted a joint offer on the purchase of the oil refinery, outbidding a series of international competitors and reaching the final stage of the contest.
“The parties were already at the signing stage; however, on October 23, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that Lukoil and subsidiaries would be added to the sanctions list ‘due to Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine’,” the information says.
After these sanctions were imposed, Lukoil, which accounts for around 2% of global oil production, announced on October 27 that it had reached an agreement to sell its international assets to Swiss oil trading company Gunvor Group. However, the U.S. Department of the Treasury refused to grant Gunvor the license to complete the deal and the company subsequently revoked its offer.
Cengiz Holding owner Mehmet Cengiz told Patronlar Dunyası in an interview that the company did not intend to cancel its plans.
“Sanctions were imposed while we were already at the signing stage. We did not back out. We are now looking into what action our legal capabilities allow us to take,” he said.
Cengiz told the publication in June that it had submitted the joint offer on the purchase of Lukoil’s Bulgarian oil refinery with SOCAR around a year ago.
“We are talking about investments of approximately $2.5 billion. It is a refinery with capacity to process 8-10 million tonnes of oil per year with its own chain of gas stations. We have some serious competitors on a global level, but we are very determined. We expect the process to be complete within two or three months. If we win, we will enter the retail fuel sales and gas station sectors,” he said.
