Since the beginning of the year the business of Oil Company LUKoil in Bulgaria is integrated in a unified structure. The platform of LUKoil Bulgaria, which comprises LUKoil Neftochim Bourgas as well, continues to bring profit in 2001 as in the previous year. However, since the beginning of the year, LUKoil Neftochim Bourgas is only a production unit in the system of LUKoil. The 1H 2001 financial results are due to the fact that LUKoil Bulgaria has proceeded to processing relations with the refinery, which turned out to be the most profitable and economically effective management method. As a result of the new management with a common budget and economy, the results achieved in the first half of the year are notably better than the corresponding year-ago results and the tax revenue is expected to be much higher. The refinery reported sale of BGN 332m for the first half of the year as compared to BGN 1,141m for 1H 2000 and loss of BGN 43.9m from a BGN 20.7m profit in the year-ago period