January 22 (SeeNews) - Multinational oil and gas company Shell said on Friday that it will start direct commercial road transport operations in Romania as of April 1.
A new legal entity, Shell Romania, will be established, gradually taking over commercial road transport activity from local agent Shell Card, Shell said in a press release.
An initial team of 57 employees will support Romanian B2B transport customers, with the majority of the team based in Bucharest.
The same services offered over the last 15 years by the local agent will now be offered directly by Shell, with no impact on daily operations for all existing customers, the company added.
"As our global and Romanian customers focus on adjusting to market changes and leveraging new technologies and more digital solutions, Shell seeks to leverage its capabilities and global know-how to bring them the energy and service solutions they need in this journey," Shell vice-president for global commercial road transport Patrick Carre said.
The commercial road transport organization in Romania is part of a global business in Shell that will focus on the energy transition in the heavy transport market. Shell said that it has set very ambitious aspirations of transitioning into a leading clean energy supplier. In Commercial Road Transport, this will mean Shell intends to lead the transition towards new fuels including liquefied natural gas (LNG) and hydrogen.
Shell first entered Romania in 1996, where it was present until 2004 with its fuel retail business and until 2007 with its LNG division. The fuel retail business was acquired by MOL Hungarian Oil and Gas Company in 2004, renamed to MOL Ro Comert and later included in the local network of the Hungarian company. The LNG division in Romania was sold to French group Rubis in 2007, alongside LNG divisions from Germany, Bulgaria, Spain, the Czech Republic and Switzerland.