Serbia's NIS plans 800 filling stations in six SEE countries by end-2015

The SEE filling station network that the company plans to deploy over the forecast period should be selling 2.0 million tonnes of fuel produced in Serbia annually, NIS CEO Kiril Kravchenko said in a statement issued after he presented the company's top projects over the next three years.

Last month, NIS said it plans to operate a network of at least 100 filling stations across Bulgaria, Romania and Bosnia by the end of 2013.

NIS has already purchased a number of filling stations in Bulgaria and Romania and last month signed a deal to take over 28 OMV filling stations in Bosnia.

NIS, due to absorb around 500 million euro ($658 million) of investments over the next three years, plans to export EU-grade fuel worth 400 million euro throughout the region next year following the completion in early November of an upgrade at its Pancevo refinery.

The refinery will shift from 2013 to producing only Euro-5 standard gasoline and diesel. The launch of a new light hydro-cracking and motor fuel hydro-treatment facility at the Pancevo refinery is set to raise the annual volume of Euro-5 standard gasoline production to 638,000 tonnes and diesel to 1.538 million tonnes.

Kravchenko also said the Pancevo refinery is due to undergo a further upgrade worth several hundred million euro.

NIS (www.nis.rs), 56.15%-owned by Russia's Gazprom Neft, is one of the largest vertically integrated companies in Southeast Europe. Its main activities include the exploration, production and processing of oil and gas, as well as the production and retail trade with a wide range of petroleum products.

($=0.7603 euro)