Oil market rebound boosts Conpet's profits

Conpet Ploiesti, an oil product carrier via pipelines recently listed on RASDAQ, has logged almost fivefold growth in first half profit in nominal terms compared with the first half of 2003.

Conpet made 58.2bn ROL (1.4 million euro) profit in the first six months compared with 12bn ROL in the same time last year.

Its officials believe the improvement in the financial results was due to the oil market rebound, which translated in a higher amount of oil products transported by the company. Conpet transported 5.5 million tonnes of oil products in the first six months of 2004, 9% more than last year.

Conpet holds the national monopoly over the transport of oil products via pipelines and its operations are subject to the regulations of the National Agency for Mineral Resources. The company’s pipeline network exceeds 4,500 km. Besides pipelines, Conpet also uses the railway for transporting oil products.

The company logged 1,106bn ROL (27 million euro) turnover in the first half, up 24% in nominal terms. Conpet saw a contribution in kind to its share capital made by the State this spring. The contribution was in form of Petrotrans assets, such as pipelines and tank cars. Petrotrans used to be part of Petrom but was separated from it prior to the start of Petrom’s privatisation process. The contribution in kind actually boosted the State’s interest in Conpet from 77% to 87%, as the minority shareholders did not subscribe in the capital increase in order to retain their stakes unchanged. Conpet’s most significant minority shareholder is SIF Muntenia, which owns 5.4%.
vlad.nicolaescu@zf.ro