In a bid to boost its oil products trade in southern Europe and Turkey, Russia's oil giant Rosneft is expanding its business ties with oil products trading and logistics firm Petrocas, which has crude storage terminals in the Caspian and the Black Sea regions.
Faced with the EU and U.S. sanctions against Russia over its role in the conflict in Ukraine, Rosneft has not been able to work with Western banks, and has turned to global trading houses such as Glencore and Trafigura.
Petrocas is owned by David Yakobashvili who sold in 2010 what was then his biggest asset, dairy products and juice-making firm Wimm-Bill-Dann, to PepsiCo in a deal that valued the Russian company at US$5.4 billion.
Now Yakobashvili, whose company Petrocas created a logistics and retail joint venture with Rosneft at the end of 2014, will be helping the Russian oil giant trade oil products in Turkey and southern Europe.
"We are pursuing joint strategic interests with Rosneft and are discussing joint involvement in infrastructure projects in the south Caucasus and beyond," Yakobashvili told Reuters in an interview published on Friday.
According to the former juice king, Petrocas is helping Rosneft boost its margins when selling refined products and delivering them to users in Europe and Turkey.
Since it struck the joint venture deal with Rosneft, Petrocas has also increased its oil products trading volumes. Petrocas sold around 1 million tons of oil products in 2014, compared to 3.5 million tons it sold last year.
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Petrocas and Rosneft have been partners in trading in the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus regions, and plans now are that trading could expand to more markets, mostly in southern Europe. The target markets include Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Italy, and Germany.
Petrocas has deals with oil companies including Kazakhstan's Kazmunaigaz, Austrian OMV, Greece's Motor Oil Hellas, Italy's Saras SpA and France's Total SA, according to Reuters.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More