US Department of the Treasury has announced that it won’t be accepting Gunvor purchase of Lukoil’s foreign assets. Gunvor is owned by the Swedish billionaire Torbjörn Törnqvist, who is a friend and close associate of Vladimir Putin. He purchased Guvnor from its co-founder, Gennady Timchenko, another close Putin associate before he was sanctioned by the US in 2014 following Russia’s invasion of Crimea.
Lukoil and Rosneft have been sanctioned and have over Russia’s war on Ukraine. SOCAR and Turkey have both started phasing out Russian oil purchases following the sanctioning. Lukoil has decided to sell its foreign assets because it is unable to profit with them under the current sanctions regime. It has various assets in Europe including oil refiners in Bulgaria and Romania, a stake in a refinery in the Netherlands and petrol stations.
Rosneft owns the Schwedt oil-refinery in Brandenburg, but the German government has taken over the operations of the site and is diverting its income into a separate account, controlled by the German government.
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