Agip: Exit from the crisis not very far

Agip Romania, the local subsidiary of petroleum giant Eni, says it has already started to make up for the volumes of fuel lost in the first five months of the year, when demand for petrol and diesel oil sold by the company fell by 7.5%. Amounts sold in June even exceeded those sold in June last year. “We think the oil market will lose around 10% in terms of volume in 2009. However, over the last few weeks we have noticed the first signs of recovery: We expect to exit the crisis tunnel in the not very distant future. According to our analysis, the sales trend changed from negative to positive, compared with the previous few months. The real question is whether this recovery, or at the very least the lower losses incurred, were the result of government measures aimed at reviving the economy or if this is due to completely independent reasons,” says Nicola Meuli, general manager of Agip Romania. Agip’s Romanian subsidiary took over ten petrol stations from MOL Romania late last year, as part of a more extensive agreement signed by Hungarian petroleum group MOL and Eni, which entailed the sale of ten MOL petrol stations to Agip Romania, and the acquisition of 26 Agip petrol stations by MOL Austria. In the wake of the deal, Agip now has 37 petrol stations and a 2.5% market share.