National Oil Company (SNP) Petrom for this year estimates profit of approximately 1,600 billion lei, against turnover amounting to 56,034 billion lei, SNP general manager Ion Popa announced at the end of last week.
Whereas at the beginning of this year the company had debts standing at 8,800 billion lei “I believe that we managed to change Petrom’s image and begin the year 2001 with a clean balance sheet, without any debts,” Popa explained.
According to SNP managers, most of these debts had accumulated between 1996 and 1998, and were derived from the debts of former Romanian Oil Company (CRP).
The problem of the debts towards former CRP was recently solved by the Government, which created a special fund for debt retrieving, by including in the price of gas and diesel oil, obtained by producers and resulted following manufacturing, a fix lei-denominated amount representing the counterpart of 0.01 dollars per litre, corresponding to the exchange rate of the last day previous to the delivery.
SNP general manager admitted that Petrom exerted a certain influence on the Government for adopting this initiative, by which, according to Ion Popa, debts will be covered in at least five years. Fuel prices will not change at SNP gas stations following the enforcement of the stipulations mentioned in this emergency ordinance.
For next year, according to the revenue and expenditure budget approved by SNP Petrom General Assembly of Shareholders, the company’s profit is estimated at 1,800 billion lei in 2001, against turnover of 65,014 billion lei, 16 percent higher as compared to 2000. Operating revenues for next year were estimated at approximately 115,000 billion lei.
In 2001, Petrom intends to make investments worth 10,500 billion lei, of which 423 billion lei are aimed at environment protection. Thus, Petrom will finalise in India the construction works for a refinery having an annual manufacturing capacity of 12 million tonnes of crude oil.