July 19 (SeeNews) - Romania's top oil and gas group OMV Petrom [BSE:SNP] said on Wednesday that it has broken ground on a new unit at its Petrobrazi refinery, based on polyfuels technology developed by French company Axens.
This first phase will involve building the foundations and will require pouring approximately 3,000 cubic metres of concrete and 335 tonnes of steel, OMV Petrom said in a press release.
The company announced in February that it is investing 60 million euro ($62.9 million) in the new unit.
"The project is going according to plan and we expect the new unit to be fully operational at the beginning of 2019," OMV Petrom executive board member responsible for Downstream Oil Neil Anthony Morgan said.
The new plant will allow for a shift in refinery production of up to 50,000 tonnes of LPG components, into gasoline and middle distillates. The project consists of three main reactors, several adsorbers, columns and pumps.
On Friday, OMV Petrom inaugurated a new railway section inside Petrobrazi refinery following a 1.7 million euro investment. In June, the company invested 5 million euro in the modernisation of the fuel quality test centre at Petrobrazi refinery.
Investments made so far by OMV Petrom in the Petrobrazi refinery in Ploiesti, in southern Romania, since the refinery's privatisation in 2005 total 1.2 billion euro. With a refining capacity of 4.5 million tonnes per year, Petrobrazi can process the entire crude production of OMV Petrom in Romania.
OMV Petrom posted a 618 million lei ($148 million/136 million euro) net profit in the first three months of 2017, more than double compared to the same period of last year.
Romania sold Petrom to OMV in late 2004.
OMV owns 51.01% of OMV Petrom share capital, the Romanian state via the energy ministry holds a stake of 20.64%, Fondul Proprietatea owns 12.57%, and 15.78% is in free float on the Bucharest Stock Exchange and London Stock Exchange.
Blue-chip OMV Petrom was trading flat at 0.3075 lei by 1350 CET on the Bucharest Stock Exchange.
(1 euro=4.5680 lei)