Socar set to invest 10m euros in filling stations in Romania this year

Hamza Karimov, general manager of Socar's Romanian office, says that after Azerbaijan has in recent years completed its hydrocarbon transport infrastructure and started building a huge refinery of around 4bn dollars in Turkey, retail expansion has been the next logical step for the state-owned giant.

For Romania, 10m-euro investments in 15 filling stations have already been scheduled, with the first stations set to become operational in around three months. The rest of 285 would follow in two-three years.

At the end of last week, Socar president Rovnag Abdullayev, made a surprising announcement regarding Socar's expansion plans, saying the company wanted to go from zero to 300 filling stations in Romania in the next two or three years, rivalling already established players on the domestic market, such as Russia's Lukoil or Rompetrol.

Taking into account investments in a filling station revolve around 1-1.5m euros, the Azeri company's plans translated in money point to around 450m euros in a market short of spectacular increases in recent years and that is already divided between major companies: Petrom, Rompetrol, Lukoil, MOL and Eni.