OMV Petrom secures long-term SAF and HVO sales deal for 2028 output

OMV Petrom on June 17 secured a five-year sales contract for up to 360,000 metric tons of future sustainable aviation fuel and hydrotreated vegetable oil from Petrobrazi refinery.

The agreement covers production starting in 2028 and guarantees at least 200,000 metric tons of SAF, with deliveries tied to a pricing formula indexed to international quotations. OMV Petrom said the transaction follows arm’s-length principles and can be extended for another five years, giving the company a longer sales horizon for a unit that has not yet started up.

Recent market quotations imply the contract is worth more than EUR 800 million. The buyer is OMV Downstream GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of OMV AG, which means the output has effectively been pre-placed inside the wider OMV group rather than being left to the open market. OMV Petrom said the structure gives it flexibility to capture additional opportunities in Romania and the region, while keeping access to airports in Central and Eastern Europe.

The deal fits the company’s earlier investment plan for Petrobrazi. OMV Petrom said on June 11, 2024 that it would spend about EUR 750 million to build a SAF and HVO unit and two green-hydrogen plants at the refinery, with production expected to start in 2028 and annual capacity of about 250,000 tons of sustainable fuels. The company then said on February 19, 2025 that construction had started, describing the project as the first major sustainable-fuels production site in Southeast Europe.

Petrobrazi already sits at the center of Romania’s fuel system. OMV Petrom says the refinery currently supplies about 35% of the country’s fuel demand, so the new SAF and HVO line links a low-carbon product slate to an asset that already carries national scale. For OMV Petrom, the sales contract reduces one of the biggest commercial risks in renewable fuels, the need to line up buyers years before first production.