Lukoil: the Italian ISAB refinery will not close
Lukoil, which owns the largest refinery in Sicily at Priolo, said on Friday it was ready to ensure the site's operational continuity after the EU embargo on imports of Russian crude oil by sea came into force on December 5, thanks to storage of oil and future supplies of non-Russian (or nominally non-Russian…) oil
Lukoil, which owns the ISAB refinery in Sicily, said through its LITASCO unit that “it is ready to ensure the uninterrupted operation of the refinery, thanks to the stored oil stocks for the coming months and future supplies of oil of non-Russian origin ”. The ISAB refinery "is currently a for-profit enterprise, a technologically advanced facility and a reliable partner for all its customers, suppliers and contractors," LITASCO said in a statement. LITASCO also confirmed that it is ready to collaborate with the Italian government "in order to guarantee the normal operation of the plant".
Last Thursday, the Italian government approved an intervention decree to guarantee the operational continuity of the ISAB refinery and save around 1,000 jobs. The intervention could consist in placing the refinery under trusteeship, although the Italian authorities are said to be trying to unblock the bank financing for the plant.
Earlier this week, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported that the government may also consider nationalizing the Lukoil-owned refinery. The government failed to get an EU waiver for using Russian crude and is now working on the details of how the Italian Treasury could end up owning the asset.
Crossbridge Energy Partners, a US-based private equity group, has resumed talks to buy the refinery from Lukoil, sources familiar with the matter told the Financial Times this week. The sources said any deal, if it is reached, would need to be approved by the Italian government. An eventual agreement could value the refinery between 1 billion and 1.5 billion euros.
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The article Lukoil: the Italian ISAB refinery will not close comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/lukoil-la-raffineria-italiana-isab-non-chiudera/ on Mon, 05 Dec 2022 14:10:15 +0000.