Russian oil major Lukoil is building a 100,000 metric tons per year lubricants blending plant in Kazakhstan.
According to an official Kazakh government web site, during a meeting with Kazakh President Nursaltan Nazarbayev, Lukoils president Vagit Alekperov said on Monday that his company is actively developing different projects in Kazakhstan. These projects include building a lubricants plant in the south of the country with a capacity of 100,000 tons per year.
At the meeting, Lukoil’s president also said that his company is the biggest investor in Kazakhstan’s oil and gas sector, noting that Lukoil has been present in the country since the early 1990s. Alekperov said that due to the support that President Nazarbayev has given to Lukoil in the course of the last 20 years, the company was able to invest about U.S. $7 billion in the Kazakh economy.
The oil major’s lubes arm LLK-International told Lube Report yesterday it could not confirm the blending plant project in Kazakhstan. LLK is the biggest lubricants marketer in Russia.
Nazarbayev, former president of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, has ruled Kazakhstan since its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1990.
One of the top priorities of the Russian oil majors is to expand in the markets of Central Asia. After Lukoil, Russian state oil major Gazprom Neft is the second biggest investor in the Kazakhstans fuels and lubricants market. In 2011, it held about 45 percent of Kazakhstan’s lubricants market, the company said last year.