MOL Magyar Olaj- és Gázipari Nyrt.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Official logo

MOL Magyar Olaj- és Gázipari Nyrt. (MOL Nyrt., in English: Hungarian Oil and Gas Public Limited Company), an oil and gas exploration and distribution group, is Hungary's largest company by sales volume. The company owns over 500 gas stations, 400 of which are in Hungary. MOL Rt. is a Joint stock company traded at the Budapest Stock Exchange, making up almost a fifth of the stock index BUX. "Nyrt." stands for "Nyitott részvénytársaság", wich means "public joint stock company" in english.

MOL was founded in 1991 by combining various elements of the state-run petroleum sector in Hungary. It bought Slovakia's national refiner Slovnaft in 2000, and Hungary's leading producer of ethylene and polypropylene, TVK, in 2001. Together with its upstream oil and gas business in Hungary, this made it one of the region's largest integrated oil and gas companies. It further strengthened this position with the foundation of a 50-50% joint venture to operate the Zapadno-Malobalyk oil field in Russia with Yukos (which was later replaced by RussNeft), and the purchase of a 25% strategic stake in Croatia's national oil company INA. The MOL group's refineries at Százhalombatta, Hungary and Bratislava, Slovakia, are among the most profitable in Europe, thanks to the company's investments in residuals processing technologies. These allow maximum use to be made of the high-sulfur Urals blend oil the company uses, from Russia. In traditional refineries, a relatively high amount of fuel oil, a product with lower complexity and lower value, is produced using Urals blend. The residuals processing technology allows fuel oil to be almost entirely eliminated from the product mix, meaning more profitable gasoline and diesel fuel can be produced. MOL has an aggressive growth strategy for the years 2006-2010, which focuses on rapid growth in upstream hydrocarbon exploration and production. MOL's incomes before taxation in 2005 were 277.2 billion forints, about 1.1 billion $. The company is also eager to increase its strategic stake in INA to a majority, but it awaits the decision of the Croatian government to carry out further steps in INA's privatization. In 2006 INA and MOL launched a joint exploration project in the Slatina (Cro) - Zaláta (Hu) area designed to secure new volumes of natural gas. The two companies are now forming a consortium in Bosnia and Herzegovina, after winning the recapitalisation tender for Energopetrol, the leading petrol company of Bosnia and Herzegovina,^[1] where they got an absolute majority by helding 67% of the shares. The reaming 23% is divided between the federal government of B&H (22%), and several minor shareholders (1%).