The Commercial Court of the city of Kyiv decided to suspend the special permit No. 5351 issued by Horizonty LLC for the use of the subsoil of the Tyniv oil and gas field in the Lviv region. The resolution was adopted on August 16, 2024 and entered into force on the day of its adoption. This decision can be appealed within ten days.
"Horizonty" LLC received this special permit at the online auction of the State Geology and Subsoil Service of Ukraine in December 2021. The special permit gave the right to the company to use the field in depth intervals from the day surface to 400 meters and without depth restrictions. The court decision suspends the company's activities pending further consideration of the case.
The court's decision was made on the basis of a lawsuit filed by another subsurface user, Naftogazrembud-1 LLC, which already has a special permit for the Tinivskoe field (No. 6562), issued in September 2021. Naftogazrembud-1 representatives claim that the new special permit for Horizonty LLC covers areas and depths allowed for development under their permit.
It should be noted that "Horizonty" LLC is a partially owned company, 20% of whose shares belong to the father of the head of the Lviv Regional Military Administration (OVA). This raised the question of a potential conflict of interest. The main owner of "Horizonty" LLC is Karel Komarek, who owns 80% of the company's shares.
Karel Komarek is known as a long-term partner of the Russian Gazprom. Despite the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the beginning of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Komarek did not stop cooperation with the main Russian gas company. Together with Gazprom, Komarek built a gas storage facility in the Czech Republic, which the Russians stopped using in full only after the implementation of the 10th package of EU sanctions, which significantly reduced Gazprom's share in the Moravia Gas Storage as joint project from 50%+ to 3%. Komarek finally severed relations with Gazprom only in June 2024 under pressure from the British authorities.
Since 2011, Karel Komarek also owned an oil and gas business in Russia, in particular, the Samara oil terminal. According to the SBU and State Financial Monitoring, this terminal was involved in the supply of oil products to the so-called "DPR" and "LPR" even before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. According to a statement from Komarek MND, the terminal is said to have been sold in the fall of 2022, but the details of the deal have not yet been released.
