ECONOMY

In Brief

Reporting season winds up this week The second-quarter reporting season for Greece’s listed companies will be winding up this week with some of the country’s largest blue chips scheduled to announce profit data in comings days. Tomorrow betting group OPAP and Alpha Bank, Greece’s third-largest lender, are among those that will announce earnings figures. On Wednesday, Fourlis and Sarantis are expected to report figures, while on Thursday National Bank, Public Power Corporation, Marfin Popular Bank, Folli-Follie and OTE telecom will unveil their first-half performances. On Friday, Marfin Investment Group makes public its earnings figures. Investors who are interested in viewing earnings announcements can access them at the Athens Stock Exchange’s website at www.ase.gr. Bulgarian power plant shut down SOFIA (Reuters) – Bulgaria’s nuclear power plant Kozloduy shut down one of its two 1,000 megawatt reactors early on Saturday for planned annual maintenance and refueling. The plant said it expected to reconnect the unit at the beginning of October. Its other 1,000 megawatt unit was working at full capacity. Bulgaria closed two 440 megawatt nuclear reactors at Kozloduy at the end of 2006 over safety concerns raised by Brussels. It plans to build another 2,000 megawatt plant, to come online in 2014-15. Pipeline resumes The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which carries crude oil from Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia, may resume full operations within days after a fire halted exports, a BP Plc spokeswoman said. «We are carrying out integrity testing on the pipeline,» Tamam Bayatly said by telephone from Baku on Saturday. «As part of that, we are ramping up the flow into the line. That will go on until we can reach full production next week.» She didn’t specify a date. A fire broke out on a Turkish section of the BP Plc-led 1,768- kilometer (1,100-mile) link on August 5, forcing the pipeline’s partners to halt the flow of Azeri crude to world markets from the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Crude from the pipeline is being pumped to replenish the seven depots at the port, which can hold 1 million barrels of oil each and were emptied during the pipeline’s closure to load tankers, said Huseyin Sagir, a spokesman for Botas International Ltd, a Turkish operating company. Botas may not wait for all seven depots to be full before shipments recommence, Sagir said, adding that they may resume on tomorrow or Wednesday. «The pipeline is now flowing at 70 percent capacity, meaning about 700,000 barrels a day,» Turkish Energy Ministry spokesman Akif Sam said in a telephone interview. Loading may start early next week as contracts with tankers are being prepared and signed. Separately, the Baku-Supsa pipeline, which pumps more than 100,000 barrels a day of crude to Georgia’s Black Sea region and was closed during the military conflict there with Russia, remains shut «as a precaution,» Bayatly said, adding that there is no start-up date yet. (Bloomberg)

Subscribe to our Newsletters

Enter your information below to receive our weekly newsletters with the latest insights, opinion pieces and current events straight to your inbox.

By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.