The Italian government has decided to place Lukoil's ISAB refinery in Sicily under temporary trusteeship (up to one year) to ensure the 320,000 bbl/d refinery will continue operating despite the upcoming embargo on Russian seaborne oil as of 5 December 2022. The facility, which is 100% owned by Lukoil, has relied solely on Russian oil since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, as banks stopped financing it and providing the guarantees to buy oil from other sources. Lukoil had acquired 49% of the refinery from ERG in 2008 before raising its stakes to 100%; the Russian company is now discussing the sale of the refinery to the US investment fund Crossbridge Energy Partners.
Meanwhile, the shareholders of the Transalpine Pipeline (TAL) that connects the port of Trieste in Italy to Vienna in Austria, Karlsruhe and Neustadt in Germany, and to the Czech refineries of Litvinov and Kralupy, have decided to upgrade the oil pipeline capacity and to raise the oil flow speed to allow the Czech capacity allocation to increase by 4 Mt/year. The €52-69m TAL+ modification project will be completed in 2025 and will help the Czech Republic prepare to a complete halt of Russian oil supplies. TAL's shareholders include OMV, Shell, Rosneft, Eni, Gunvor, ExxonMobil, Mero, Phillips and Total.
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