Petrom's shareholder: Investments will be cut by 10% at the most

OMV, majority shareholder of the largest Romanian company, Petrom, is cutting investment budgets, altering major objectives announced until 2010 and putting them off by several years. This set of measures will not leave Romanian operations unaffected, although the Austrians are giving reassurance that it is not on the Romanian market that the strongest effects of these crisis strategies will be seen. “In Romania, investments will be cut by quite a low amount due to the fact that the Romanian market has a big potential. However, investments will be cut by 10% at the most, while the 2010 production target could go down by 5-6%, and be met one or two years later than scheduled,” explains Helmut Langanger, a member of OMV’s executive board, in charge of exploration and production. OMV had announced an annual investment budget of 800 million euros for the exploration and production segment, and 150 million euros for the discovery of new reserves.