Volumes of petroleum products transported by LatRosTrans (LRT) have increased by 3% in 2011, reaching 5.79 million tons per year. Within the past two years, volumes of diesel transported by LRT have increased by about 54%, and the company anticipates that the positive trend will continue.
For the first time since 2001, LRT has worked with a profit in 2011 – it was 8.02 million lats. The company’s profit of the reporting year will not be distributed into dividends. The largest investment programme since 2007 was approved for the company this year – LRT is planning to invest 7.4 million lats into its economic activity in the course of the next four years.
Value of LRT’s assets has increased by 10% in the past year, as well as net turnover increased, reaching 10.2 million lats in 2011. Owing to the successful cooperation with the State Police of the Republic of Latvia and the Internal Security Service established in the company – the number of unauthorized connections has decreased by over 50% in 2011 compared to the last year.
“The past year has been successful not only from a point of view of business, but we have taken a large step forward technologically as well”, emphasizes the Head of LRT Igors Stepanovs. “ Last year LRT completed a project, which has won a high appraisal of the industry specialists, for chemical cleaning and preservation of a 102 km section of the Polotsk – Ventspils crude oil pipeline. We have implemented such project for the first time and have acquired a lot and have obtained priceless experience that we will need in the future”, Stepanovs explains, pointing out that only a third of the 336 km long crude oil pipeline owned by the company is cleaned at the moment.
On March 7, 2012, the Chamber of Civil Cases of the Supreme Court, ruled to cancel the prohibition for LRT and its associated persons to perform actions related to pumping out and removal of the technological crude oil from the Polotsk – Ventspils main crude oil pipeline in the territory of the Republic of Latvia. As a result of this, LRT has legal rights to pump out and remove the remaining crude oil and to use the crude oil pipelines in its economic activities. “We are planning that we can cleanse another part of the crude oil pipeline until the end of the year so that the existing infrastructure can be adapted for new business needs”, explains the Head of the company.
About LatRosTrans
LatRosTrans Ltd owns two crude oil pipelines in the territory of the Republic of Latvia: Polotsk-Mazeikiai and Polotsk-Ventspils, which have not pumped oil in the last years, and one petroleum product pipeline Polotsk-Ventspils, which currently actively provides transport of diesel.
LatRosTrans Ltd is the largest Latvian-Russian joint venture in the Baltic States. The Russian partner – joint stock company Transnefteprodukt (subsidiary of Transneft) owns 34% of the company’s shares, while 66% of the shares are owned by joint stock company Ventspils nafta (NASDAQ OMX RIGA: VNF1R). LatRosTrans is the second largest limited liability company in Latvia in terms of the share capital, which is 107.5 million lats.
Ilze Nagla
Public Relations Manager
JSC Ventspils nafta
Tel.: +371-29267454, +371-67715914
E-mail: ilze.nagla@vnafta.lv