BRUSSELS — Russia’s largest private oil company has cut a deal to sell off most of its international assets to a U.S. financial firm, in compliance with U.S. sanctions designed to hit the country’s war economy.
Lukoil said in a statement Thursday that it had agreed to sell Lukoil International, which oversees the firm’s foreign portfolio, to the Carlyle Group, a major U.S. private equity firm.
It’s now waiting on approval from Washington, which had given the company until Feb. 26 to sell off its international business.
The move, if approved, severely hampers a globe-spanning operation that encompasses Mexico, Europe, the Middle East and Africa and represents one of Russia’s premier sources of oil and gas revenues. It follows a monthslong scramble to find buyers after the U.S. announced sanctions on Lukoil — and state-owned Russian oil major Rosneft — in October last year.
