Petrom to lay off 3,000 employees

At the time of its privatization, Petrom had more than 50,000 employees. Under the privatization contract, the number should have reached 24,753 last year. But in 2008 the number of personnel went up by about 10,000 workers as a result of the Petromservice takeover, which enables Petrom to cut some 10,000 jobs.
The company ended the first nine months of last year with a net profit of EUR 622 million, a 48 percent increase on the same period in 2007. This result was due to a hike in the price of oil in the first half of the year, to $150 per barrel. Since then, the price has gone down to about $40 per barrel. The company posted a turnover of some EUR 3.52 billion, up by 50 percent.
Petrom witnessed an annual drop in production in Q4 last year to 192,000 barrels of oil equivalent (BOE) per day from 195,000 BOE. Combined sales of gas and power stood at 1.32 billion cubic meters in the last three months of 2008, a 1.42 billion cubic meter decrease from the same period of 2007.
Petrom has oil and gas reserves estimated at 0.9 billion BOE and a maximum annual refining capacity of 8 million tons. It owns 550 gas stations in Romania and another 257 units in the Republic of Moldova, Bulgaria and Serbia.

Dana Ciuraru