On July 2010, the Albanian Parliament passed a Normative Act which
allowed the public company “Albpetrol” to sell oil with stock market
prices, something that had not been allowed before.
“Let’s allow this company to trade its goods with international stock market prices, so that they can have it easier to withdraw liquidations and meet obligations”, declared the then Minister of Economy, Dritan Prifti, on July 8th 2010.
Albpetrol has two main sources of oil: the first one is the oil that comes of the wells that are still owned by Albpetrol. The second source, which is bigger, comes from concessionary companies as pre-existing production. This quantity comes from wells before they are transferred to private concessions.
Concessionary companies used to pay the pre-existing production quantity, converted into monetary value based on their export prices. The government’s act obliged them to hand over the pre-existing production not in money value, but in oil, so that Albpetrol could sell it in the market.
What are the financial effects of this decision?
Top Channel owns documents from Albpetrol auctions for selling oil, which show that the public company has sold petrol with a price which is 100 dollars lower per ton than the price used by private concessionaries.
The document mentions 25,000 tons of oil that Albpetrol has sold in January 2013. According to the document, the sale price varies fromk 448 to 471 USD per ton. On the same period, “Bankers Petroleum” has sold the same oil with an average price of 570 USD per ton.
Even in February 2013, the price differences for the same oil are around 100 USD per ton. Losses mount to millions of dollars. Albpetrol signed an agreement last year for selling 200.000 tons of oil, most of which they had not produced yet, but they were about to receive from concessionaries and from their own production.
Only from this auction, Albpetrol has lost 20 million USD even when compared with the prices of other concessionaries, in a time when the company not only has not paid its tax obligations, due to financial difficulties, but has also failed to pay its workers.
Top Channel
