By an OGJ correspondent
NICOSIA, Apr. 21 -- Rompetrol Group NV (TRG), 25.1% owned by Austria's OMV AG, plans to invest $31 million in construction of a new oil terminal 7 km off Midia, Romania, in a bid to increase crude imports and reduce handling costs.
The proposed terminal is the first stage in a two-stage process that will also see the Romanian firm eventually developing facilities to increase its exports of refined products. It will be built as a satellite of Constanta Port, which was originally constructed to serve the nearby petrochemical and industrial area.
TRG Pres. and CEO Dinu Patriciu said construction would begin this summer and be completed in 2004.
The company announced its plan shortly after Bank Austria Creditanstalt granted TRG a $30 million loan, nudged along by OMV. On acquiring its stake in Rompetrol last September, OMV said its commitment included "new money being made available to TRG for use in the Petromidia refinery."
TRG already owns the existing oil terminal at Midia, acquired as part of the Petromidia refinery TRG purchased in 2000. TRG has since invested $87 million to upgrade the refinery and $2.5 million to increase the capacity of the port. The investments tripled the amount of oil received and processed last year by the port and refinery complex to 250,000 tonnes of oil/month, more than 90% of it imported.
International sources report Romania's refining capacity far exceeds domestic demand for petroleum products, positioning the country to export a wide range of oil products and petrochemicals. But nearly all Romanian refineries are underutilized because of a lack of crude oil supplies, and the majority remain in the government's hands, running at 50% of capacity or less and needing repair.
TRG's refinery upgrade and new terminal project coincide with increased oil imports and aim at securing even greater supplies, said Cristian Andrei, Rompetrol's business development executive.
The port expansion would nearly triple Rompetrol's oil import capacity. "Midia Port has a present crude oil import capacity of 250,000 tonnes/month, and the capacity of the [new] marine terminal will be 700,000 tonnes/month," Andrei told OGJ Online.
Over the past year, TRG won several tenders for the supply of crude oil from the State Oil Co. of the Azerbaijan Republic (SOCAR). TRG also acquired the rights from Romania's National Agency for Mineral Resources (ANRM) for two oil fields—E IV-3 Zegujani and E IV-5 Satu Mare—and is negotiating with ANRM on the contractual terms of the lease documents.
Andrei said, "At present, these operations are performed by two state-owned companies. The new facility will reduce discharging and transporting costs by approximately 75¢/ton."
Rompetrol was set up in 1974 and privatized in 1993. Patriciu bought the majority stake in 1998 and transferred the headquarters to the Netherlands. TRG has since become the largest private operator in Romania's refining and marketing sector, second only to state-owned SNP Petrom.
TRG owns the Petromidia (Navodari) and Vega (Ploiesti) refineries, with a joint production capacity of 110,000 b/d, and a national warehouse network supplying the group's 127 gas stations.
TGR's most important commpany is Rompetrol Rafinare-Complex Petromidia SA, which owns and operates the Petromidia refinery, with a production capacity of up to 4.8 million tons per year. The refinery last year recorded $800 million in turnover, some 80% of the group's total of $1 billion.
