RusEnergy

23.03.2005 17:36 MSK MosNews - Russian oil major Lukoil has announced on Wednesday, March 23, that it will invest $200 million in production of high octane fuel at its Volgograd refinery in the Volga federal district. The information was announced by Lukoil's CEO Vagit Alekperov, quoted by Interfax agency. The oil company's official said that the refinery plans to upgrade the quality of the fuels it produces by introducing catalytic reforming of gasoline in 2006, isomerisation of gasoline fractions in 2008 and a catalytic cracking. The Volgograd plant, one of Lukoil's four refineries in Russia, had a throughput of 8.96 million tons of oil (180,000 barrels a day) last year and produced 920,000 tons of gasoline, 2.47 million tons of gas oil and 1.52 million tons of fuel oil. On Wednesday, March 23, Lukoil has also announced that it spent $160 million on acquisition of two gas station networks in Finland. The acquisition deal was approved by the European Commission earlier this week.