Brands, Energy Market, Good for Business, Latvia, Markets and Companies

Martins Stirans, the head of the Latvian Fuel Traders Association, told LETA that he, too, had seen the Shell logo at a Trest filling station, which might be an indication that the Dutch-British oil company was planning a comeback in Latvia.

The head of the association, however, did not know how and with how many filling stations Shell is going to return to Latvia.

Stirans explained that companies of this size do not open one or two stations at a time and that they usually take over whole chains of filling stations. The head of the association assumes that, apparently, the time has not yet come for Shell to make an official announcement about its plans in Latvia.

Trest Oil representatives declined to give comments.

Shell fuel retail stations in Latvia were taken over by Statoil back in 2003 after signing an agreement on purchase of Shell's fuel stations in the Baltic states in October 2002.

The ownership of Trest Oil changed in February this year as the Cyprus-registered Olmax Invest Limited took the company over from Andrejs Maksimovs and Olegs Cernikovs.