First Reserve Corporation has entered the Romanian market through the acquisition of Amromco Energy and plans to expand regionally from Romania, the company has announced. This is a first phase of First Reserve’s plans to build an oil and gas platform in the Central and Eastern European region. The value of the deal has not been disclosed.

“We plan to extend the company’s activities in Romania and develop new opportunities to roll out its proven production enhancement model into other countries such as Bulgaria, Hungary and Poland. This buy and build strategy has been central to First Reserve’s success in energy investing over the last three decades,” said Anastasia Deulina, director with First Reserve,

“The Central and European region is estimated to have nearly 60 billion barrels of oil equivalent of undeveloped gas resources while the broader European region is keen to broaden the sources from which it imports gas. Romania’s geographic position, its operating history and infrastructure, and its resource potential make it an attractive location to provide a platform to develop into the region and we are excited by the opportunities for us to work with Amromco to achieve this,” Deulina went on.

Amromco is the third largest gas producer in Romania, after Romgaz and Petrom, and is focused on the acquisition of upstream oil and gas projects in emerging markets and their subsequent enhancement through the application of state of the art extraction technologies, according to First Reserve.

Amromco Energy LLC is a privately-held independent exploration and production company based in Houston, Texas with offices in New York, Bucharest and Ploiesti, Romania. The company’s core business is the enhancement of existing oil and gas fields in emerging markets such as Romania. Amromco has over 200 employees. First Reserve is currently investing its most recent private equity fund, which closed in 2009 at approximately USD 9 billion and its most recent infrastructure fund which closed in 2011 at approximately USD 1.2 billion.

editor@romania-insider.com

(photo source: Sxc.hu)