Fuel consumption will fall by 10% this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, and demand will not return to pre-pandemic levels earlier than 2022, said Radu Caprău, OMV Petrom’s Downstream Oil director, said on Wednesday.

“In the second quarter, the demand for oil products was strongly affected, which will be reflected in year-on-year decreases, even if we see a recovery trend in this period, better than we initially estimated. We believe that the results for this year they will be about 10% lower than in 2019, in terms of fuel demand,” said Caprău, quoted by Agerpres.

According to the report from the first semester of the company, in the first half of this year the demand for fuels on the retail segment (population) decreased by 13% compared to the same period last year.

The strongest decrease was in the second quarter of the year, respectively 25% compared to the second quarter of 2019.

OMV Petrom posted in the first half of this year a net profit of 867 million lei, down 56% compared to the same period last year. Sales revenues were of 10.069 billion lei, down 11%.