Gazprom Neft Buys Italy Assets

Gazprom Neft extended a Russian push into European refining and marketing on Wednesday by buying Italian oil operations from U.S. oil major Chevron. Gazprom Neft will buy a plant in Bari, in southern Italy, which produces 30,000 tons of oil and 6,000 tons of lubricants a year for cars, trucks and other industrial uses, and fuel marketing and sales operations in Rome, the companies said. The plant produces 150 types of oils used in cars and commercial transport as well as industry including drilling, according to the statement. Gazprom Neft will also get the right to use the Texaco brand in the Italian market until 2010. Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company, and Gazprom Neft, Russia's fifth-largest oil producer, did not reveal the price of the deal. Gazprom Neft said in a statement that it expected production and marketing synergies between the Chevron assets and the Serbian oil refiner NIS, which it took control of earlier this year. Chevron said last month that it would push ahead with streamlining its lubricants product line and would exit retail markets. Russian oil companies' push into downstream activities in Europe reflects Gazprom's own effort to acquire gas distribution and power-generation assets across the continent and consolidate control of the country's domestic assets. Rival LUKoil bought a 49 percent stake in ERG's Isab di Priolo refinery on Sicily last year and held talks to buy a large stake in Spanish oil company Repsol, which has a large refining portfolio. Last month, Russian oil producer Surgutneftegaz agreed to buy 21 percent of Hungarian oil refiner MOL. Earlier this month, Gazprom spent $4 billion to buy back a 20 percent stake in Gazprom Neft from Italy's Eni, which had picked up the stake at a 2007 auction of the assets of bankrupt oil firm Yukos.