While oil companies are complaining are complaining about the precarious state of the road and railway infrastructure in Romania, claiming that it"s causing them to incur losses which are then reflected in the price of fuel at the pump, the state currently holds an abandoned network of pipelines which, if used efficiently, could reduce the shipping expenses of oil companies by as much as 50%.
* The Ministry of the Economy will draft a feasibility study following which it will decide on the whether the national network for transporting oil will be maintained or dismantled
After repeated price increases since the beginning of the year, the price of fuel is getting vertiginously close to the level of 6 lei/liter and could cause a domino of price increases for consumer goods.
Oil makers claim that, apart from the rise in the price of the oil barrel and the high level of taxes and excises charged by the state, the price of fuel at the pump is also influenced by the losses that they incur due to the precarious state of Romania"s infrastructure, which his slowing their shipments down.
Constantin Tampiza, the coordinator of the development strategy of the Russian oil group Lukoil in Romania, recently said: "Due to the bad road infrastructure in Romania, we have to replace our tanker trucks once every three years. Simply cutting our speed by 5 km/h - to avoid our trucks going off the road due to the terrible state that the roads are in - we lose 2-3 dollars per ton of fuel".
The authorities are surprised that the price of fuel is spiraling out of control, but seem oblivious to the fact that they own an abandoned network of pipelines for transporting oil products (gas, diesel fuel, CLU), left at the mercy of scrap metal thieves, and which, if it were adequately exploited, could partially solve the fuel issue.
The officials of the Mini
