Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Around the Stynavske oil and gas field in Lviv region, a real thriller is unfolding. The story began under President Viktor Yanukovych, when a company affiliated with the then-Environment Minister Mykola Zlochevskyi received a production license. Later, this license was revoked. Consequently, the extraction rights should have been auctioned.
Initially, that seemed to be the direction as well. But when the state-owned company Ukrnafta prepared an auction, it suddenly became clear that the Stynavske field overlaps with the Semyhynivske field. The special permit for the latter belongs to LLC Pari Naftogaz, which is owned by Mykola Zlochevskyi’s daughters, Anna and Karina.
The two fields overlap not only geographically. Crucially, the permit from Pari Naftogaz contains no depth limit for the extraction of the minerals, even though the productive deposits lie only five meters apart: the Stynavske field lies at depths from 2.800 to 3.600 meters, and the Semyhynivske field lies between 3.605 and 4.540 meters. In the current license version issued in July 2022, there are no details about depth boundaries.
In other words: the two fields lie on top of each other. On the surface, their areas partially overlap, while the known reserves lie at different depths. However, Pari Naftogaz’s license does not specify either the upper or lower depth boundary of the permitted area.
The resulting scandal has an obvious backdrop: if the missing depth boundary can be interpreted so that Pari Naftogaz’s license covers the entire vertical volume of earth beneath the neighboring area, it could also be interpreted as a right to extract minerals at any depth.
The central question, therefore, is: Why were the depth boundaries removed from the permit, even though the protocol of the State Commission on Mineral Resources clearly sets Semyhynivske’s deposits at depths of 3.605 to 4.540 meters? The answer seems obvious. But those who examine not just media reports but also official documents more closely will see that the matter could be significantly more serious than initially thought.
Geological data as an independent asset
Particularly revealing details appear in indirect documents that trace Pari Naftogaz’s geological assets and financial relationships. This includes a ruling of the Supreme Court dated 18. December 2025 in proceeding No. 320/35831/24. Formally, the case concerns a tax dispute between LLC Pari and the tax authority. The text of the judgment, however, also describes corporate decisions, the transfer of a special permit, the acquisition of seismic data, and relationships to other extraction companies.
The name Pari stands out, a company that has not featured prominently in the scandal surrounding the missed auction. In fact, there is a direct link to the case, as the tax dispute documents show.
On 17 September 2021, Pari spun off a new company, LLC Pari Naftogaz. It received Special Permit No. 5398 for the use of minerals in the Semyhynivske field, originally issued on 25 October 2011.
Pari Naftogaz LLC was registered on 7 December 2021. The corporate records list Andriy Pavliv as the manager, the Cypriot company Semyhynivske Holdings Limited as founder, and Anna and Karina Zlochevskyi as beneficial owners.
Already on 30 March 2021, Pari LLC had signed a contract with Geoyunit for seismic surveys. The aim of the work was to more accurately determine the geological structure of the area, identify promising hydrocarbon traps, and develop recommendations for deep drilling.
After the permit was transferred to the new company, the results of these works had to be documented separately. The
In other words: both the special permit and the geological data became the subject of separate legal transactions. This is an important fact for tracing how the company that obtained the field’s exploitation rights accumulated its assets.
This raises two fundamental questions: Which specific geological data were transferred to Pari Naftogaz, and were they used in planning development in areas adjacent to the Stynavske field? Also, what documents prove that the actual use of these data complies with the limits and conditions of the special permit?
Answers to these questions naturally do not appear in the court ruling. The case concerned a tax dispute; the license and the change of its holder were not at issue for the court. Yet the devil is in the details: the course of the case shows that the preparation of the Semyhynivske field for development included not only obtaining a license but also costly investigations, the results of which could be managed by a separate company.
The Pylypivske gas field and the oddly forgotten prosecutor's office
The revealing details do not end here. They are particularly important for understanding Mykola Zlochevskyi’s business practices. The same court document describes business relationships between Pari LLC and the company Binengo in connection with the development of the Pylypivske gas field.
On 16 July 2018, the parties signed an agreement on collaboration in development. It envisaged joint activities in drilling, equipping, and operating production wells. Originally, net profits from selling the extracted hydrocarbons after taxes and mandatory payments were to be shared equally among the participants.
An addendum from 2 August 2023 changed the profit distribution: For the period from 16 October 2023 to 15 October 2024, 30 percent went to Pari, and 70 percent to Binengo. From 16 October 2024, the agreement again provided profit sharing in the ratio 50 to 50.
But what interests us is not the profit sharing but the Pylypivske gas field itself. And its history also holds some remarkable twists.
In the year 2011, Pari received Special Permit No. 5384 for gas production in this field. 2016 attempted to have the permit annulled by the Specialized Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) in court, arguing that procedural regulations were violated in the issuance, particularly the necessary consent of Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Council.
In June 2017 the Supreme Administrative Court of Ukraine rejected the prosecutor’s claim for failure to meet the time limit for filing, leaving the permit in force.
Of course, this does not prove anything with absolute certainty. But the missed deadlines of the prosecutor’s office are as conspicuous here as the peculiar absence of depth information in the Semyhynivske field permit.
It should also be noted that shortly before, in a separate appeal, the prosecutor’s office failed to overturn four additional special permits granted to Pari and two other companies tied to Zlochevskyi: Technoresurs LLC and Nadragaz LLC. The reason was the same: the anticorruption prosecutor had missed the deadline for filing.
Dispute over gas prices
In the same tax case, there was also a dispute over the sale of natural gas by Pari LLC in the years 2019 to 2023. The tax authority accused the company of selling gas at prices below the usual market level. By its calculations, this led to an understatement of net financial results by 465,18 million hryvnias.
The courts did not accept the tax authority’s argument. The Supreme Court upheld the decisions of the lower courts.
This case cannot be cited as proof of tax evasion: on contested points the court ruled in favor of the company. Nevertheless, the episode illustrates the scale of financial transactions in the mining sector and shows why not only licenses, but also gas supply contracts, the structure of business partners, and cash flows should be examined.
A look at the numbers
The financial statements of Pari Naftogaz LLC contain metrics that require separate review. For 2025, the company showed assets of 174,5 million hryvnias, liabilities of 217,9 million hryvnias, and a net loss of 12,5 million hryvnias.
For 2026, however, clearly different quarterly figures are reported: assets of 417,8 million hryvnias, liabilities of 501,3 million hryvnias, and a loss of 40 million hryvnias in the reporting period.
Taken alone, these figures do not indicate violations, but they raise new questions. What were the sources of funding for the geological exploration work? What loans, intercompany settlements, and liabilities shaped the balance sheet? How were rights to geological information and seismic results accounted for? And how did assets change after the transfer of the special permit and corporate restructurings?
Separately, it must be clarified what lies behind the asset growth in 2026: new investments, revaluations, intercompany asset transfers, or other factors. But to do so, financial reports and primary documents are required, which are accessible only to state authorities.
The license from 2011
Let us return to the license that sparked the scandal. Given the circumstances described, the assertion that someone “forgot” to specify the depth boundaries of the productive horizon raises serious questions, to say the least.
If this were not the Ukraine, the responsible person would have already struck a deal with investigators and disclosed the necessary details. In particular, it should be clarified why the dispute over the development areas, despite different reservoir depths, is mainly being conducted based on the surface boundary overlap.
At the same time, it must be considered that a five-meter depth difference between the intervals does not by itself prove the absence of geological connections between the reservoirs, nor does it by itself allow the conclusion that development of one field cannot affect the other without reviewing planning documents.
If the lower boundary of the permitted area is not specified in the documents, the question arises how the supervisory authority precisely interprets the scope of the granted rights and what restrictions arise from the documents on which the permit was issued.
Here lies the central contradiction of the entire story: on the one hand, the geological reserves cited in the research materials show a clearly defined depth interval. On the other hand, the wording of the current permit contains no corresponding depth limit.
If this fact is confirmed by all documents, the question arises whether the discrepancy between the geological basis and the license text allows an unjustifiably broad interpretation of a private user’s rights to mineral resources. Spoiler alert: that is exactly the case—along with all the consequences that follow.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Die Unternehmen von Mykola Zlochevskyi stehen im Fokus ukrainischer Öl- und Gasressourcen". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Rozsliduvach.