July 10 (SeeNews) - The Romanian arms of German utility E.ON and Hungarian oil and gas group MOL plan to build 40 charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs) in Romania until 2020 with the support of European funds.
The investment project will start this year, the two companies said in a joint statement on Friday.
Of the 40 stations, 19 will be installed by E.ON Romania and the remainder by MOL Romania.
E.ON and MOL Romania's NEXT-E project was selected to receive funds through the Mechanism Connecting Europe Facility — CEF of the European Commission, with a recommended financing of 18.84 million euro ($21.45 million).
"Installing electric car chargers in our stations as part of the NEXT-E project will help us become our customers' first choice not only for fuel or food, but also In terms of alternatives to traditional fuels," MOL Romania's country chairman & CEO of Camelia Ene said.
The quick chargers will be located within the perimeter of MOL's fuel distribution units on the Arad-Bucharest-Constanta motorway (on pan-European corridor IV), the Sebes-Targu Mures-Iasi motorway and the Suceava-Bucharest-Giurgiu motorway (on pan-European corridor IX).
The NEXT-E project brings together companies within the E.ON group - Zapadoslovenska energetika from Slovakia, E.ON Czech Republic, E.ON Hungary, E.ON Romania, companies within MOL group - represented by the subsidiaries from all the six attending countries, Hrvatska elekropriveda from Croatia, PETROL from Slovenia and Croatia, Nissan and BMW.
E.ON entered Romania in 2005 and currently operates a natural gas distribution network over 21,650 km long andan electricity distribution network of over 81,500 km. It is active in 20 counties located in the middle of the north of the country, with about 3.1 million customers. Over the past 11 years, E.ON has invested more than 1.4 billion euro in Romania.
MOL entered the Romanian market 21 years ago and had a total network of 206 gas filling stations at end-December. In 2015, it bought from Italy's Eni 208 gas stations in Romania, Czech Republic and Slovakia. Eni operated 42 gas stations in Romania under the Agip brand.
($= 0.8779 euro)
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