HELSINKI (Reuters) -Finnish petrol station chain Teboil, owned by Russia’s Lukoil, is running out of fuel as U.S. sanctions against its parent company prevented it from doing business, daily Helsingin Sanomat reported on Friday, citing a Teboil spokesperson.
U.S. President Donald Trump on October 22 hit Rosneft and Lukoil with sanctions in a sharp policy shift on Moscow’s war in Ukraine, and said companies doing business with subsidiaries of the two groups could also be sanctioned.
A deal for Swiss commodity trader Gunvor to buy Lukoil’s foreign assets collapsed on November 6 after the U.S. Treasury called it Russia’s “puppet” and signalled Washington opposed the deal.
Lukoil is struggling to keep operations running at its sprawling foreign businesses, including in Iraq, Finland and Switzerland, sources have said.
“We are running down our fuel stocks, which means some stations are already out of certain fuel types and the number of such stations is growing daily,” Toni Flyckt, Teboil’s marketing and communications director, told HS.
Teboil did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Finland’s Financial Supervisory Authority last month said banks and other Finnish institutions subject to its regulations should exercise caution in dealing with Lukoil and companies directly or indirectly owned by it.
Teboil, which is fully owned by Lukoil, has 430 Finnish stations according to its website, or roughly one fifth of the Nordic country’s 2,250 stations according to a 2024 report by an industry group.
The company’s revenue fell in recent years as some Finns said they chose other stations due to Teboil’s link to Lukoil, declining to 1.61 billion euros ($1.88 billion) in 2024 from 2.36 billion euros in 2022, its annual reports show.
The Kremlin said on Friday that Lukoil’s international interests should be respected.
($1 = 0.8575 euros)
(Reporting by Essi Lehto and Elviira Luoma, editing by Terje Solsvik and Sharon Singleton)
