December 11, 1997. - LUKOIL President Vagit Alekperov on December 11 signed agreements on cooperation with the government of the Leningrad region and with the administration of St.Petersburg. The agreements were also signed by Governor of the Leningrad region Vadim Gustov and Governor of St.Petersburg Vladimir Yakovlev.

These agreements mark one more step in broadening LUKOIL's activity in the region. On April 9, 1996, LUKOIL concluded an agreement on cooperation with the administration of St.Petersburg on selling oil and petroleum products, and on the production and supplies of oil equipment and machines.

Under the newly-signed agreements, LUKOIL will broaden tolling cooperation with the Kirishinefteorgsintez refinery.

LUKOIL will also continue building its own gas filling stations in St.Petersburg and in the Leningrad region, where it already runs two gas filling stations.

A major LUKOIL gas-filling complex comprising a gas-filling station, a car maintenance center, a car-washing facility, a shop selling packed petroleum products and accompanying goods, and a cafe was opened in Gatchina in the Leningrad region today. The complex's capacity is 500 fillings per day. LUKOIL is planning to put into service two more gas-filling complexes shortly. The complex in Gatchina is part of the LUKOIL customs and storing terminal commissioned at the beginning of 1997. It comprises covered storage facilities with an area of 3,000 square meters, and a floorspace of 6,000 square meters for storing containers, and is the first and so far only facility of its kind in the region.

LUKOIL also intends to build gas-filling stations along the Vyborg-St.Petersburg-Moscow and North-South highways, and also along the ring highway. The Company's gas filling stations will have an electronic payment system.

Under the reached agreements, LUKOIL will organize the transhipment of export petroleum products in the port of St.Petersburg, for which accumulating tankers will be placed in the port during the river navigation season. The administration of St.Petersburg in turn will help LUKOIL build a sea oil terminal with an annual handling capacity of 1 million tonnes.

Today Alekperov attended a keel-laying ceremony for the first of the three ice-breaking tankers to be built by St.Petersburg's Admiralty Shipyards on LUKOIL's order. This tanker, with a displacement of 20,000 tonnes, can carry four types of fuel simultaneously. It has double boards in the place where tanks are located, and can break one-meter-thick ice without using an ice-breaker. Another five tankers of this class are to be built in Wismar (Germany). LUKOIL intends to use these tankers for transporting petroleum products to Russia's northern regions.

On the Company's behalf, Alekperov passed to the Gatchina museum-palace a hand-woven carpet made in the reign of tsar Nicholas I. The carpet had been bought from a private collection specially for the Gatchina museum. Similar carpets once decorated the Gatchina palace, but were lost after the socialist revolution in Russia.

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