Gabriel Comanescu, owner of the Upetrom group, has few business ties left with the Romanian market. The most important of them are the eight contracts with Petrom to exploit offshore reserves. Otherwise, most of the output of the Upetrom 1 mai factory is exported, land-drilling operations were sold last year and the company’s biggest plans target foreign markets. The businessman can now afford to think about development: he ended 2008 with an 80 million-dollar profit, which surged from 2007 (when it stood at 4 million dollars).

Explanations about the reason for the increase in profit are same as the explanations about the development plans. The company, which took over Petrom’s offshore rigs in a deal put at 100 million euros in 2006, dedicated 2007 to investments in the retooling of those rigs. Once the investments finished, 2008 showed exactly how much profit the five rigs can generate. Comanescu’s mediumterm plans are to secure as good a position as possible among drilling companies, which will be validated by the number of contracts won. Businessman Gabriel Comanescu got into the petroleum business in 1999 when he bought land drilling companies Foserco and Aquafor from the AVAS (State Assets Resolution Authority) as they had been put up for privatisation.

The acquisition of the two companies was an advantage in the bid submitted for the acquisition of the 1 Mai drilling equipment factory in 2001, when Gabriel Comanescu won the tender against Uralmash Russia, part of the OMZ group. The three companies bought had already reached approximately 30 million-dollar turnover in 2004 when Gabriel Comanescu signed his first offshore contract. It happened right after Petrom’s privatisation, because OMV preferred to focus on the core business of the new company and sell the offshore operations.