site.btaCustoms Agency Head: Half of Processed Oil in Lukoil Neftochim Burgas in 2021 Was Non-Russian

The Lukoil Neftochim Burgas refinery worked last year with 50% non-Russian oil, said the director of the Customs Agency Pavel Gerensky during Wednesday's meeting of the parliamentary energy committee. "To date, the refinery operates with just over 88% Russian oil. Last year this amount was 50%," he said. 

According to Delyan Dobrev, chairman of the energy committee in the National Assembly and a member of the parliamentary group of GERB-UDF, arguments that the refinery cannot work with oil other than Russian are completely superfluous, given that last year it worked with 50% non-Russian oil. He believes that the reason the refinery is working almost entirely with Russian oil this year is that Russian oil has fallen in price by 30-40% since the start of the war in Ukraine compared to other grades. "The fact that last year this refinery worked only with 50% Russian oil means that it is possible that next year it will work with 50% Russian oil, which will remain for the share of the domestic market, because it is about 50%," Dobrev pointed out. That is why he rejects the argument that the refinery may stop working because the export of fuels from Russian oil will be limited. He believes that the only thing that will happen is that the excess profits will be smaller because 50% of the fuel will be at 30-40% higher price. That is why GERB-UDF is proposing to collect the revenues in the Electricity System Security Fund.

Acting Deputy Finance Minister Lyudmila Petkova warned that the refinery would stop working if it was banned from exporting the residual products processed from Russian oil because it had nowhere to store them.

Ivaylo Mirchev of the Democratic Bulgaria parliamentary group said BGN 80 million have been paid so far to Lukoil Neftochim as compensation for high electricity prices.

After this discussion, the parliamentary energy committee did not adopt a draft decision on the application of the derogation from December 5 to reduce fuel prices on the domestic market. According to the draft decision, a traceability regime should be introduced for fuels and petroleum products produced in Bulgaria from Russian crude oil. The traceability regime should ensure the implementation of the derogation granted to Bulgaria by the Council on June 3 to allow fuels and petroleum products produced from Russian crude oil to be sold only on the Bulgarian market. As an emergency measure to tackle high energy prices, it is proposed to levy an additional tax on companies' excess profits for both 2022 and 2023.

During the discussions on the draft decision, the chairman of the parliamentary energy committee, Delyan Dobrev, said that it could clash with other similar bills.