The FINANCIAL -- The OAO LUKOIL would like to announce that the Board of technical enquiry into the causes of the fire outbreak at the Stavrolen petrochemical facility and the ensuing breakdown of an ethylene-producing unit on December 15, 2011, completed its work on February 4, 2012.

According to LUKOIL , the Board’s report says that most probably the fire was caused by the unsealing of connecting elements in the assembly for separation of the propane-propylene fraction. The unsealing, in its turn, was caused by corrosion and structural changes that had occurred while the equipment was in use.

By preliminary estimates, the damaged and destroyed property is worth almost 812 million rubles.

According to the time schedule of manufacture and delivery of the new equipment, ethylene unit operation is expected to resume no later than on April 1, 2012.

Recovery operations will not impair the timeline of the gas chemical facility construction project at Stavrolen’s production site.

The Company is now looking at the possibility of organizing supplies of propylene in order to renew the production of polypropylene before the end of February 2012.

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