NEW FACILITY COMES ON STREAM AT LUKOIL’S UKHTA REFINERY

Thursday, July 1, 2004

A new trestle for oil discharge and dark oil products loading was put into operation at OAO “LUKOIL-Ukhtaneftepererabotka” today.

The railway trestle is a top-priority constituent of the trestle complex which also comprises storage reservoirs and an oil booster station.

Both sides of the trestle have rail access. Each side of the trestle can receive up to 30 eight-wheel tank cars. Moreover, the number and position of the filling stands make it possible to load sixteen-wheel tank cars with larger capacity.

The construction and assembly work at the site started in March 2003. The erection of the facility required 396.5 million rubles. The completion of Stage-I and the start-up of the trestle will allow to achieve an annual discharge/loading turnover of 4 million tons.

The trestle fully meets all industrial and ecological safety requirements. Some technical solutions were used to significantly reduce hydrocarbon outage during trade operations in order to minimize adverse ecological impact.