ROMANIAN OIL INDUSTRY: History

Romania has a tradition of over a 150 years in the extraction and Processing of Petroleum Products.
It is worth mentioning that Romania is the first country that went to illuminate the streets in Bucharest with oil (1856).
Romania is among the first countries which started production of oil. Since 1857 Romania has achieved a production of about 257 tones (according to the publication of Petroleum Science).
During the time were founded companies operating in the petroleum field, were the technologies developed into extraction and processing, were the legislative framework has seen a continuous evolution (in 1857 appears first Mining Law).
Today, Romania has a total integrated oil industry. The extraction ,processing ,storage and distribution chain is complete.
The extraction sector has seen a continuing evolution in terms of extraction technologies used and the amount of oil extracted.
Possessing substantial oil refining capacities, Romania is particularly interested in the Central Asia-Europe pipelines and seeks to strengthen its relations with all worls producers . With 10 refineries and an overall refining capacity of approximately 5,504,000 bbl/d (875,100 m³/d), Romania has the largest refining industry in the region. Romania's refining capacity far exceeds domestic demand for refined petroleum products, allowing the country to export a wide range of oil products and petrochemicals, -- such as lubricants, bitumen, and fertilizers -- throughout the region.

These are the main oil refineries in Romania:

The oil extracted in Romania is classified into 14 types of oil. The only company that manages the extraction Oil is the National Oil Company SNP Petrom SA. Over 5 million tones of oil are imported early by refineries of Romania. In terms of increasing consumption of fuel and the decreasing trend of the amount of oil extracted by local companies, the share quantity of imported oil will increase, which would lead to structural changes in the entire petroleum industry.

During the recent years the processing sector has attracted multinational companies as: LUKOIL (Russia) and OMV (Austria). LUKOIL bought the package control package of the refinery Petrotel and OMV portfolio of the refinery Petromidia.

Dinu Patriciu, chairman and owner of the Rompetrol Group (registered in the Netherlands) has sold a 75% stake of the company for 2.7 billion dollars to Kazakhstan's state-run petroleum company KazMunaiGaz, which had announced their intention to enter the European market several months ago.

The sector distribution of numbers over 170 stores and over 1600 of gas stations distributed across the Romania's territory.

The most important companies in the sector is the company SNP Petrom, hold more than 150 deposits of oil products and over 600 gas stations. This sector has attracted the attention of several multinational companies,as Shell, Agip and LUKOIL and regional companies as OMV and MOL.

The distribution sector has registered at the end of 2007 about 1300 filling stations. Sectors above are operating with the support of some horizontal connected industries such as: