The OMV group, Petrom’s majority shareholder, started merging the refining and marketing and the gas and power units into a single downstream division.
Neither Petrom nor Cristian Secosan provided any comment on the information by press time.
Cristian Secosan was the second Romanian executive brought on board after the company appointed Mariana Gheorghe as chief executive officer in 2006.
Cristian Secosan holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the Polytechnic University of Timisoara and has held various management positions in energy sector companies like ABB, Alstom and E.ON. Prior to joining Petrom, he served as general manager of Siemens Romania.
Secosan joined Petrom at a key moment for the company, when it was directing efforts towards boosting the electricity business. In the fall of 2012, Petrom connected the gas-fired power plant in Brazi to the national grid, following an investment of EUR530 million.
The power plant with a nameplate capacity of 860 MW was supposed to be a profit center for Petrom, turning the cheap gas whose regulated price was kept low into electricity sold on the free market. It turned out to be a losing bet because the power price dropped and demand reverted to 2009 levels, the worst year for Romania’s economy after the onset of the global financial crisis.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)