Hellenic Petroleum owns almost half of Greece's refining capacity, which totaled 401,400 bbl/d in January 1, 2004. HP's Aspropyrgos facility refines about 134,900 bbl/d, while the Thessaloniki refinery has a 66,500-bbl/d capacity. Two private refineries, owned by Motor Oil Corinth Refineries and Petrola Hellas, are export oriented; selling only limited volumes to the national market. Motor Oil, which had been majority-owned by Saudi Aramco, was partially sold off to Petroventure of Jersey (UK) in July 2001, a joint venture of Aramco and Vardinoyannis, which separately each own 16.4% of Motor Oil. HP also is the largest player in the Greek retail oil market at a 26% market share. U.S.-based Texaco and British-Dutch Royal Dutch/Shell decided in 2000 to trade Texaco's Greek retail assets for some of Shell's United Kingdom retail assets.
In 2003, HP announced the purchase of 200 gasoline stations in the Balkans region. The stations would be operated under the EKO Hellenic Petroleum brand name in Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. EKO Hellenic announced in January 2004 that it has further plans to build 40 additional stations in Bulgaria.
