MOL Romania Appeals Against Romanian Fuel Probe Decision

The Romanian arm of Hungarian oil and gas company MOL Nyrt. (MOL.BU) has appealed against the verdict of the Romanian antitrust regulator, which slapped a 80.27 million Romanian lei fine (EUR18.5 million) on the company Tuesday.

The competition council fined six top players in the oil industry, also including OMV Petrom (SNP.RO) and Rompetrol Rafinare (RRC.RO), with a total of around 880 million lei (EUR202 million) for having breached competition laws.

The alleged breach of antitrust regulations refers to the six companies agreeing to withdraw a type of fuel from the market and replacing it with a more expensive one in 2008, thus hurting consumers.

"MOL Romania states that withdrawing ECO Premium from its fuels portfolio was its individual business decision and not the result of an anticompetitive agreement, concerted practice," MOL said.

As of Jan. 1st 2005 it was prohibited to sell leaded gasoline in Romania, MOL said, adding refineries therefore replaced the lead content with other metallic additives, thus creating the ECO Premium assortment.

MOL Romania will file a motion to suspend the execution of the decision and will challenge it at the Bucharest Appeal Court within 30 days as required by local legislation.

-By Veronika Gulyas, Dow Jones Newswires; [phone]; [e-mail]