July 10 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's parliament adopted legal amendments paving the way for the establishment of a state-owned company to manage the warehousing and replenishment of the country's reserves of oil products, it said.
The company will engage in the establishment and operation of tax warehouses, as well as storage and trade with crude oil and petroleum products, parliament said in a statement on Thursday.
The state-owned oil company cannot be privatised and cannot undergo insolvency proceedings, it added.
Within three months of its establishment, the company will seek a license to operate tax warehouses.
In May, the finance ministry proposed to establish a state-owned company that would manage the warehousing and replenishment of the country's reserves of oil products and would run a network of filling stations across the country. The new company that will perform all the functions of the government's State Reserve and Wartime Stocks agency will help optimise the management of the mandatory oil and oil product reserves of the state and will ensure they are sustainably maintained in line with the EU requirements, the ministry said.
The planned network of filling stations will be built within a year in order to boost competition on the local market, the ministry said at the time.
The finance ministry's proposal was unveiled less than two weeks after Bulat Subaev, director general of Lukoil Bulgaria, the operator of the Burgas-Sofia oil product pipeline, said that the company may suspend operations due to legislative changes requiring it to split its single tax warehouse into separate regional units.
Amendments to the Excise Duties and Tax Warehouses Act, proposed by the government on May 5 oblige operators of oil product pipelines located on the territory of more than one regional customs office in the country to apply for separate licences with each one of these regional offices within a month after the adoption of the act. The parliament adopted the changes on second and final reading on May 12.