LUKoil to invest $25 bln in oil refining

Russia's largest private oil firm LUKoil plans to invest $25 billion in oil refining and petrochemistry in the next 10 years, it said on Monday. "We are developing oil refining both in Russia and abroad. In the next 10 years we will invest about $25 billion in the development of oil refining and petrochemistry," LUKoil head Vagit Alekperov said in a video posted on LUKoil's press office blog. "Also, a contract to build Eastern Europe's largest hydro cracker is to be signed at the end of September at the LUKoil Neftekhim Plant in Burgas in my presence and, I hope, in the presence of Bulgaria's prime minister." LUKoil, whose output fell 1.7 percent in 2010 to 95.99 million tons of oil, plans to boost hydrocarbon production by 30-40 percent in 10 years, he said. "We are getting close enough to the top three leaders, who are now playing in the international oil club. So I am sure that in 20 years we will be one of the leading vertically integrated energy companies," said Alekperov. The company relies on Russia's Timano-Pechora region, a mature petroleum province located north of the Ural Mountains near the Barents and Kara seas. "Timano-Pechora is one of the most promising provinces for our company to date. We have 11 more deposits there, which need to be launched... In the next 10 years we plan that oil production and development will only grow, both in conventional and non-conventional oil."