OMV AG has agreed to sell the wholly owned subsidiary that has maintained its obligatory oil inventories to ELG, a private firm appointed as the Austrian central stockholding entity.
To meet Austrian legal requirements, OMV must guarantee availability of 25% of its annual imports for use in supply emergencies. Until the sale, it used the subsidiary, Lagermanagement, to maintain an oil inventory for that purpose.
Like many countries, Austria requires private companies to maintain enough stocks for the country to meet strategic-supply standards of the European Union and International Energy Agency By acquiring the subsidiary, ELG assumes that portion of OMV’s emergency stocks.
“This transaction will make OMV’s refining and marketing business more comparable to its peers who, for the most part, either do not have a similar stockholding obligation or have already outsourced the stockholding,” OMV said in a statement.
