Lukoil, Russia’s largest private oil company, ended 2025 with a net loss of 1.059 trillion rubles. According to the published IFRS financial statements, this is the first annual loss in the company’s three-decade history. For comparison, even during the 1990s crisis when Russian oil prices dropped below $10 per barrel, the company remained profitable. In the 2020 pandemic year, Lukoil earned 15.2 billion rubles, and in 2015, amid the first wave of sanctions, its net profit was 291.1 billion rubles.
The main cause of the financial collapse was a massive write-off of foreign assets totaling 1.66 trillion rubles. This includes oil fields, refineries, and gas station networks across 11 countries. Following the imposition of blocking U.S. sanctions, the activities of its foreign subsidiaries were paralyzed, and attempts to sell assets with a book value of $22 billion are being blocked by the U.S. Treasury.
Key indicators for the past year:
- Revenue: decreased by 15% to 3.77 trillion rubles.
- EBITDA: fell by 36% to 892 billion rubles.
- Operating profit: halved to 527 billion rubles.
Analytical summary: The collapse of Lukoil’s financial performance represents a tectonic shift for the Russian economy. For the first time in 30 years, the “money machine” that survived the 1998 default and all global crises has officially acknowledged the loss of its international empire. The asset write-off of 1.66 trillion rubles is a de facto admission that the company’s foreign network no longer belongs to it functionally. For the EU, this is a signal that the sanctions strategy has achieved its goal: Russian oil majors are losing the ability to operate in the global market. The inability to sell blocked assets turns them into “dead capital,” depriving the Russian budget of massive dividend revenues and calling into question the sustainability of the entire private oil production model in the country.