MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Repsol-YPF reducing Latam's incidence in its global turnover

Spanish Oil Company Repsol YPF announced Wednesday the sale of a chain of 206 service stations in Chile to Colombian company Organizacion Terpel for 210 million US dollars. Repsol said the sale was part of the restructuring of its Latin American assets.The sale also includes the industrial sales business including its infrastructure. Repsol plans to focus on its core business said Madrid's El País.

Repsol will keep in Chile its aviation fuel and lubricants business and its liquefied gas activities where it is the market leader through its 45% stake. Repsol YPF has been in the fuel distribution business in Chile since 1999. Terpel is an affiliate of Promigas which is controlled by Ashmore Investment Limited, an investment fund with based in Cayman island. With its latest acquisition Terpel becomes Colombia's main fuel distributor and keeps expanding in the continent where it already has 1.400 service stations in Mexico, Panama, Ecuador and now Chile. Repsol-YPF CEO Antonio Brufau said that with the sale of assets in Chile the corporation has concluded its current leaning process and is now embarked in an "organic" expansion which will be demanding 5 billion Euros annual investment for the next five years. The main Spanish oil corporation will now direct its interests to other geographic areas, which will lighten the weight of its Latinamerican component (Argentina, Bolivia and Mexico) in the overall operation. However in the immediate future the corporation is also in the process of divesting 45% of its stake in the Argentine affiliate YPF, sometime in the first half of 2008. According to Madrid's El País in the first quarter of next year, the company will sell 20% of its assets to an Argentine company and before the end of the second quarter the remaining 25% will be floated in the local stock exchange.