Kazakhstan has filed a formal bid with the U.S. Treasury seeking authorization to buy out the Kazakh assets of Russia’s sanctioned oil firm Lukoil, Kazakhstan’s Energy Minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov said on Wednesday.
The United States sanctioned Lukoil at the end of October, which prompted the Russian firm, the country’s second-largest oil producer, to seek a sale of its foreign assets.
Soon after, Lukoil accepted a bid from trading house Gunvor for its assets outside Russia, but the U.S. Treasury blocked the sale, saying that the trading group is “the Kremlin’s puppet.”
After Gunvor withdrew the bid, companies including private equity giant Carlyle, U.S. oil and gas supermajors Chevron and ExxonMobil, and International Holding Company (IHC) of Abu Dhabi have expressed interest to the U.S. Treasury to potentially acquire Lukoil’s international assets.
Kazakhstan – where Lukoil is a minority shareholder in huge oilfields and the pipeline consortium shipping crude to Russia’s Black Sea coast for exports –says it has pre-emption rights to buy out Lukoil’s stakes.
“We already said at the end of last year that we have a preemptive right under law to exercise our right to buy out the stake if Lukoil sells the assets in Kazakhstan. The Energy Ministry has sent the corresponding request to OFAC,” Akkenzhenov told reporters on Wednesday, as carried by Russian news agency Interfax.
“There are various forms to buy out the share package, including some kind of deferred payment or through proceeds from raw material sales. There are many options, and we are considering them all,” the Kazakh minister added.
OFAC has issued a general license until February 28, 2026 to enable Lukoil to divest its assets outside of Russia to non-blocked parties.
In Kazakhstan, Lukoil holds 13.5% in the Karachaganak oilfield, a 5% stake in the Chevron-led Tengizchevroil consortium operating the huge Tengiz oilfield, and 12.5% in the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which operates the pipeline from the Caspian coast in northwest Kazakhstan to the Novorossiysk port on Russia’s Black Sea that handles most of Kazakhstan’s crude oil exports.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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