French oil major TotalEnergies handed over management of its Russia lubricant business to a Russian entity, and the transaction includes its 40,000 metric tons per year lubricant blending plant in Kaluga, state news agency Tass reported last week.
Terms and conditions of the transaction were not disclosed.
“TotalEnergies handed the production business over to the management of the local subsidiary, TotalEnergies Marketing Russia, which was running the plant [this past year]”, Egor Popov, the company’s head of commerce and marketing said in the Tass report. “On March 2 a new ownership has been registered, and the company is now renamed to Top Lubricants.”
Popov added that local management is now working to restart the plant’s operation, and at the earliest will resume a “normal cycle of operation” March 15.
According to Popov, 90% of the employees will keep their jobs.
The planned transformation of the plant includes rebranding and production of different types of motor, hydraulic and industrial oils under the new brand – Lemarc.
By deadline, TotalEnergies’ headquarters did not respond to a request for comment.
Shell, ExxonMobil, BP and other Western oil majors, as well as Japan’s Idemitsu, all exited the Russian market after Moscow started its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. TotalEnergies followed suit and left the market as well.
Its U.S. $50 million, 40,000 t/y blending plant in Kaluga opened in 2018 and has a scale-up option to increase capacity to 70,000 t/y. It halted operation last year in the spring. In June, Shell took similar steps and sold its 180,000 t/y lubricant blending plant in Torzhok to Russian oil major Lukoil, in unspecified terms and conditions. The Torzhok plant is producing Teboil-branded products, too. Teboil is a former Finnish petroleum products marketer bought by Lukoil in 2005.