Petrom to Invest 200 Million Euros in Petrobrazi Refinery

OMV Petrom SA (SNP), Romania’s biggest oil company, plans to invest about 200 million euros ($250 million) in its Petrobrazi refinery by 2014, the company said in a regulatory filing to the Bucharest Stock Exchange today.

Petrom invested about 100 million euros to upgrade the crude vacuum distillation unit at the refinery, which resumed operations this week after a six-week shutdown.

“The upgraded unit is very important in the refinery’s modernization process because it will allow us to improve the product mix in order to respond to the market demand,” Neil Anthony Morgan, Petrom’s board member responsible for refining and marketing said in the statement.

Petrom, majority owned by Austria’s OMV AG (OMV), is seeking to increase its refining efficiency and stabilize local oil and gas output, while searching for new resources to help offset declining production. The company said it has invested 400 million euros in the refinery upgrade since 2010 and the refinery is now able to process all its domestic crude production.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andra Timu in Bucharest at atimu@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James M. Gomez at jagomez@bloomberg.net