MARCH 3 (The Conway Bulletin) — Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company Socar failed in its high-profile bid to buy up the chain of petrol stations in Turkey owned by Austria’s OMV.
Instead, OMV said it had sold the group of 1,785 petrol stations, called Petrol Ofisi, to Vitol Investment Partnership, a subsidiary of commodities company Vitol for $1.45b. Petrol Ofisi is the biggest petrol retailer in Turkey with a 23% market share.
The failure to secure a the petrol station group will be a disappointment to Socar, Last month, in an interview with a Turkish newspaper, the general director of Socar Turkey Energy, Zaur Gahramanov, said that if its bid to buy the OMV petrol stations in Turkey failed, it would pursue alternative options.
Socar owns the Star oil refinery in Turkey and has said that it wants to expand its downstream operations.
ENDS
>>This story was first published on March 4 2017 in issue 319 of the weekly Conway Bulletin newspaper