Turning Soviet oil fields into Lukoil
Alekperov's fortune comes from his shares in Lukoil, the oil company he helped create as the Soviet system was collapsing. In 1991, while serving as deputy minister of the oil and gas industry of the Soviet Union, he brought together three state oil producers in Western Siberia (Langepasneftegaz, Urayneftegaz and Kogalymneftegaz) to form a single company. The initials of their towns gave Lukoil its name.
The new company was among the first vertically integrated oil groups in Russia, combining oil production with refineries and fuel stations. After it was privatized in the 1990s, Alekperov and a group of senior managers built up stakes in the company, and he remained its president for three decades.
Under his leadership Lukoil expanded production in Russia, bought refineries in Russia and Europe, and moved into international projects. It became one of the largest oil companies in Russia not controlled by the state, and its shares were traded in Moscow and, through depositary receipts, in London. Alekperov's large stake in the company, built over many years of management, is the source of his wealth.
Lukoil at home and abroad
Lukoil's operations have included:
- Oil and gas fields in Western Siberia, the Timan-Pechora region and the Caspian Sea
- Refineries in Russia, Romania and Bulgaria, a Sicilian refinery that it sold in 2023, and a stake in a Dutch refinery
- A large international upstream business, including the West Qurna-2 field in Iraq and projects in Central Asia and West Africa
- Fuel station networks in Russia, Europe and, for a time, the United States, where Lukoil bought the Getty Petroleum Marketing chain in 2000
In the 2000s the American oil company ConocoPhillips bought a minority stake in Lukoil, which it sold around 2010. Lukoil also sponsored sports clubs in Russia and was long associated with the football club Spartak Moscow through its vice president Leonid Fedun.
In April 2022, after the United Kingdom placed him under sanctions following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Alekperov resigned as president of Lukoil and left its board. In 2025 the United States imposed sanctions on Lukoil itself, which pushed the company to look for buyers for many of its foreign assets.
From Baku to the Siberian oil fields
Vagit Yusufovich Alekperov was born in 1950 in Baku, then the capital of Soviet Azerbaijan, into a family connected with the oil industry. His father worked in the oil fields of the Caspian region. He studied at the Azerbaijan Institute of Oil and Chemistry and began working on offshore oil platforms in the Caspian Sea in the early 1970s.
In 1974 he moved to Western Siberia, the heartland of Soviet oil production, where he worked his way up through drilling and production enterprises. By the late 1980s he was running Kogalymneftegaz, a production association in the Siberian town of Kogalym.
His success there led to his appointment as a deputy minister in Moscow in 1990, a position that allowed him to organize the merger that created Lukoil. He also earned a doctorate in economics and has written books on the oil industry.
Charity and later years
Alekperov has funded charitable work through several channels. In 2007 he founded Our Future, a foundation that supports social entrepreneurship in Russia with loans, grants and training for businesses that address social problems. Lukoil's own charity fund has supported schools, hospitals, cultural organizations and programs for veterans in the regions where the company operates, particularly in Western Siberia and the Volga region.
He has also supported the restoration of churches and mosques and cultural projects connected with the history of the Russian oil industry, and he has long been involved in charitable work in Kogalym, the town where he spent much of his early career.
Since leaving Lukoil's management in 2022 he has kept a low public profile. He remains subject to sanctions in the United Kingdom, Australia and several other countries, which restrict his ability to travel and to hold assets abroad. His remaining wealth is still closely tied to Lukoil and to the fortunes of the Russian oil industry under sanctions.