Artificially low fuel prices set by Lukoil's former trade manager Rumen Spetsov have left the refinery short of cash, deputy prime minister and economy minister Alexander Pulev said on BNT's "Still Making the News" programme.
"The refinery is working on a very low profit margin, unlike under the previous special trade manager, who — not in my view, but in the view of the Commission for Protection of Competition — was squeezing prices," Pulev said. He denied the refinery is running at a loss.
More than $200m is now tied up in diesel stocks that have built up, he said. That money is frozen in fuel sitting in storage instead of being used to run the plant.
At those prices, the plant would have lasted two or three months at most, Pulev believes. He called the approach short-sighted, aimed only at looking good and setting a trap for the next manager. Spetsov knew his term wouldn't last long but pushed the policy anyway, the minister said.
Pulev said Spetsov set his own salary and then asked for an extra one-off payment on top of it. "It would take an ordinary Bulgarian five years of honest work on an average wage to earn what he made in one month," the deputy prime minister said. He added that he was never shown any documents on the matter.
Because of this, Pulev has called on the current trade manager, Evgeni Simeonov, to get a major international firm to audit how the refinery has been run. That audit is being prepared now, and the findings will be made public, the minister said.
He said the current management is also socially engaged, but not in a way that puts the plant's finances at risk. Crude oil can now be bought at fair market prices with a competitive premium, and the refinery is running at full capacity, turning out more than before.
Petrol station prices won't change just because the ban on exporting oil products has been lifted, the deputy prime minister said. The move isn't aimed at Lukoil alone — it lets the whole industry sell surplus stock in other markets. Exporting is an option, not a requirement, he said, meant to stop the industry losing market share for good.
Lukoil isn't among the sectors facing a windfall profits tax, Pulev added, and there's no reason to think the company is making outsized profits right now.