August 14, 1997 - LUKOIL President Vagit Alekperov and Governor of the Kirov region Vladimir Sergeyenkov met in Kirov August 14 to sign a cooperation agreement.

Under the agreement, the sides will jointly extract, refine, transport and sell oil and petroleum products in the Kirov region.

They will draft a plan for building and updating gas filling stations in the Kirov region for the period between 1997 and 2000. This year, LUKOIL is to update a gas filling station already in operation, and start building two gas filling stations with a daily handling capacity of 500 cars in the towns of Nolinsk and Zuyevka.

The administration of the Kirov region, in order to improve the environment and to use secondary resources more rationally, will instruct the local enterprises to collect used lubricants and pass them to the LUKOIL-Kirovnefteprodukt enterprise for refining.

LUKOIL, in turn, will lay a pipeline to the town of Vyatskiye Polyany during the construction of the Perm-Almetyevsk petroleum-products pipeline.

The LUKOIL Trade House will set up an office in Kirov to purchase local agricultural produce, consumer goods, tyres of the Kirov tyre plant and metal products put out by the Omutninsk steel mill. The sides will also consider the possibility of buying the Kirov biochemical plant for reorganizing it into a facility that will put out LUKOIL products.

"The agreement will undoubtedly promote mutually-advantageous relations between our company and the Kirov region which has a great economic potential," Alekperov said.

Earlier, LUKOIL signed cooperation agreements with the authorities of St.Petersburg, the Sverdlovsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaliningrad, Astrakhan, Perm, Chelyabinsk, Vologda and Volgograd regions, the Chukot Autonomous District and the republics of Tatarstan, Mari El, Ingushetia, Yakutia (Sakha) and Dagestan.

Press Centre  OAO "LUKOIL"
phone.: (095)927-1677,  fax: (095)927-1653,
E-mail: pr@lukoil.com