Romania’s Petrom to double planned investment
June 3rd, 2008 | by admin |By Marius Zaharia
BUCHAREST, June 3 (Reuters) - Romania’s top energy firmPetrom SNPP.BX, majority owned by Austria’s OMV (OMVV.VI: Quote, Profile, Research),plans to more than double investments until 2010 to meetexpansion and modernisation goals, the company said on Tuesday. The investment plans included reducing production costs,increasing sales and improving the efficiency of its refiningarm.
“To reach the strategic objectives for 2010, the companyestimates annual investment of 1.5 billion euros … due toacquisitions, new projects, industry costs inflation, and thecondition of equipment,” Petrom said.
A five-year strategy, drafted in 2005, envisaged spendingplans of 3 billion euros ($4.68 billion), but by 2007 Petrom hadalready spent 2.2 billion euros. It now plans to spend about 1.5billion euros annually until 2010.
“The overall investment costs will be more than doubleprevious plans,” Ramona Zanfirescu, a Petrom spokeswoman, toldReuters.
The company said record high global energy costs had a mixedimpact on its bottom line, but gave no details.
Petrom wants to reach an output in Romania of 210,000barrels oil equivalent (boe) per day, compared with 89,000 boelast year and plans to reduce output costs to $15 per boe,compared to $17.8 per boe in the first quarter of this year.
It plans to reach a daily output from the Caspian region to20,000 boe per day by 2010, compared with around 5,000 boe perday currently.
It also plans to expand the capacity of its Petrobrazirefinery in Romania to 6 million tonnes a year from 4.5 milliontonnes currently. Petrom expects to complete the modernisationof its refining facilities in 2011.
