The Russkies are coming! For Seek Fact readers in the Northeast US, you will soon be able to buy over-priced gasoline from Vladimir Putin and his KGB buddies. The previously named Getty and ConocoPhillips stations are to be re-branded as "Lukoil". The Russian oil giant of the same name now owns these outlets. There is an article about it behind the subscriber wall at fortune.com (page 194, dead-tree offline, 25 July). It is only 500 words long, so I will summarize. Lukoil has the second largest reserves of $60 oil on the planet, after that other super-sized capitalist entity known as Exxon. Experts say that Lukoil, which trades in London, is the safest bet in the Russian oil patch. The same experts feel the company is immune to a Yukos style pogrom, because it actually pays taxes to Putin and company, and covers its political back. Yukos, another oil giant, somehow messed with Putin, and was run by so-called "Mafia capitalists". For those of you who think all capitalists are Mafia, please book your one-way visa for North Korea or Cuba now. The price earnings ratio of Lukoil is only seven (half that of Exxon), since the Russian market is politically risky. If you can stand this risk, you will still be rewarded with a tiny one percent dividend. Imagine what you could do with all those rubles. Lukoil can be bought over the counter, with ticker symbol LUKOY.PK. The current price is about $43, and the daily average volume is 500,000 shares. As always, consult your financial adviser. For you young whippersnappers out there, let me explain the "PK" on the Lukoil ticker. Years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, there were basically three types of securities. First were the exalted NYSE issues. Next came the OTC, or over the counter market, and lastly were the pink sheets. The OTC securities didn't quite qualify for the NYSE higher standards. The pink sheets were even worse, they couldn't even be handed over the counter. Like some back alley pharmacist, they had to be pushed under the counter. Brokers passed around the bid-ask prices for these stocks on mimeographed sheets of pink paper. You can google "mimeograph", to see what the hell that means. Fast forward to the present, where the NYSE is still the premier market. The OTC market matured into NASDAQ with some respectable names like Dell and Microsoft. Even the pink sheets have evolved. Now with the ticker suffix PK for "pink", they are still mostly the dogs (pink poodles?) of the stock business. But there are indeed some potential decent companies there, and Lukoil may be one of them. Check out www.pinksheets.com for more information, especially this page for the leading volume and value foreign stocks.