July 27 (SeeNews) - Romania’s top oil and gas group OMV Petrom [BSE:SNP] said on Thursday that it signed a European funds contract for the development of a 40 million euro ($44.3 million) network of electric vehicle charging (EVC) points in Romania, Hungary and Slovakia.
The project aims to install more than 400 ultra-fast charging points along the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) by November 2025, OMV Petrom said in a press release. Romania is planned to be home to 328 charging points at 80 locations, Slovakia to 52 in 11 locations and Hungary to 28 in seven locations.
Of the total investment, some 15 million euro are provided from European funds, through the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), almost 5 million euro represent credit from Romania’s Banca Comerciala Romana (BCR), while the remainder is secured from OMV Petrom’s own funds.
“We have started to develop solutions with low emissions and zero carbon, for which we propose to allocate about 35% of the estimated investments until 2030 of about 11 billion euro,” said Christina Verchere, OMV Petrom CEO.
The European funding secured for the project will be disbursed by the European Executive Agency for Climate, Infrastructure and the Environment (CINEA) to three OMV subsidiaries in Romania, Slovakia and Hungary, respectively. Romania’s transport ministry along with the ministry of European investments and projects will also provide support for the project.
Each charging point will have an installed capacity of 150 kW, allowing for charging in approximately 10-15 minutes, depending on the capacity of the vehicles, for an operating range of 200 km.
In December 2021, OMV Petrom announced it would install 100 EVC stations in Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova and Serbia by the end of 2022. At the end of June, the company had 150 recharging points in Petrom- and OMV-branded filling stations in Romania and across the region.
OMV Petrom shares traded 2.19% higher at 0.56 lei ($0.1258/0.1136 euro) as at 1034 CET on Thursday on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.
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