July 14 (SeeNews) - Romania's top oil and gas group, OMV Petrom [BSE:SNP], said on Friday it has inaugurated a new railway section inside Petrobrazi refinery following a 1.7 million euro ($1.9 million) investment.
With this new 1.4 km section, the length of the railways in the refinery has reached almost 50 km, Petrom said in a press release.
Around three quarters of the railways in Petrobrazi have been modernized during the past ten years. The investment in these upgrades, including maintenance works, has exceeded 50 million euro.
OMV Petrom uses railway transportation for a significant part of fuel production at Petrobrazi. The fuel is loaded into tanker railcars in the refinery and then transported to Petrom's terminals across the country, where they are then distributed to filling stations.
"In the past years, we have put a lot of effort into optimizing this fuel path in terms of logistics. The inauguration of this new railway section will allow us to reduce costs even more due to reducing the maneuver time needed, and will contribute to increasing the safety of operations,” OMV Petrom executive board member and responsible for Downstream Oil, Neil Anthony Morgan, said.
The new railway section built near the cocker unit interconnects with four other existing tracks, thus making it easier to maneuver the railcars. By easing traffic in the area and increasing the safety of operations, this project is estimated to have a positive impact on the local community. More than 50,000 tanker railcars are loaded with oil products annually in Petrobrazi refinery.
In June, OMV Petrom has invested 5 million euro in the modernisation of the fuel quality test centre at Petrobrazi refinery located in Ploiesti, in southern Romania. In February, the group invested 60 million euro in a new unit at Petrobrazi for the conversion of LPG components into petrol and middle distillates using a catalytic process. The new unit is expected to be fully operational at the beginning of 2019.
Investments made by OMV Petrom in Petrobrazi since the refinery's privatisation in 2005 total 1.2 billion euro, of which around 600 million euro was invested in the modernization programme that took place between 2010 and 2014. 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.
Shares of blue chip OMV Petrom were traded 0.16% lower at 0.3075 lei on the Bucharest Stock Exchange as at 1114 CET on Friday .
(1 euro=4.5625 lei)