Two new gas stations along the southeastern Sun Highway

The daily average sales of the Rompetrol stations are of 13,000 liters per unit. This summer, gas stations located along the highway registered sales 50 percent higher than other stations.

Rompetrol’s investment in the two units was of some $7 million, and will be amortized in some 15 years. The company will open a further two gas stations under the new brand this fall, along A2, and finalize another two units by the end of October, on the same highway, for which it will allocate some $6 mln.

The newly inaugurated gas stations are under a premium brand, which will activate alongside the old Rompetrol brand, just like Petrom has its PetromV premium brand and the Petrom standard brand.

The value of the Rompetrol brand is now nearing €100 million, according to an estimate by Titov Buzescu, Global Retail Manager of the oil group, whose business amounted to $8.7 billion (€5.9 bln, computed at the average exchange rate for 2008 of $1.47/€1) last year.

The official indicated that no accurate assessment of the brand has been conducted, and the latest official value was €72.5 mln, according to the Romanian Brandient company in 2006.

By 2012, the Rompetrol group will invest some $700 mln (€490 mln) to increase Petromidia’s refining capacity by 20 percent, to five million tons annually, according to company officials.

“We also plan to raise the percentage of fuel produced by Petromidia and sold in our gas stations from the current 55 percent to 75 percent in the coming four-five years,” Buzescu added.