The court battle between Lukoil and Bulgaria's Customs Agency over the two revoked warehouse tax operator permits of the company has once again been rescheduled for end-January.

On Monday, the expert witness said in court that it was almost impossible to establish the time of the installation of electronic measuring devices which had been functioning at the refinery in September, the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) reported.

Lukoil failed to observe the June 26, 2011 statutory deadline for the installation of electronic devices reporting incoming and outgoing volumes at its tax warehouses to the National Revenue Agency (NRA), the Rosenets oil terminal and the Burgas-based Lukoil Neftochim refinery.

Bulgaria's Customs Agency suspended Lukoil's two tax warehouse operator permits on July 22.

After lodging an appeal against the preliminary execution of the individual administrative acts, the Neftochim refinery was allowed to stay in operation until the case was resolved with a verdict on the grounds that a disrupted production process would result in "substantial or hard to repair damages" for the company.

The temporary production halt at Lukoil Neftochim caused Bulgaria to tap state reserves for jet fuel for the airports in Varna, Burgas and Sofia.

On Monday, the three expert witnesses explained they had visited the Burgas-based plant in September, when not all of the mandatory devices had been installed, while some of those already mounted did not match the requirements.

It turned out that the experts had conducted the check following a scheme provided by Lukoil rather than the document compiled by the customs administration in 2010.

The judge ordered the expert witnesses to carry out an inspection following the 2010 scheme and to try to determine when the installation had taken place.

In the course of the Monday session of the Administrative Court Sofia City (ACSC) it also emerged that two protocols of the Customs Agency had revealed a discrepancy of "hundreds of thousands of liters" between the volumes reported by refinery's measuring devices and the warehouse availabilities, news portal mediapool.bg reported.

The documents were dated October 03.

The Customs Agency's legal advisors first tried to enter the documents into evidence but subsequently withdrew them because they admitted they had nothing in common with the suspended license proceedings.

The representatives of the Customs Agency noted, however, that it was either Lukoil which had been misreporting warehouse availabilities, or its monitoring devices had been sending false reports.

Andrey Delchev, Lukoil's lawyer and Chair of the Bulgarian Petroleum Association (BPGA), objected to the claim, arguing that it erroneously suggested that the company's equipment was reporting fuel volumes incorrectly.

On December 05, Customs Agency head Vanyo Tanov assured that the refinery would bring its activity in compliance with the law by mid-January 2012, while the upgrade at the Rosenets oil terminal would be more time consuming and would be completed by the end of next year.

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