Poland’s largest oil company PKN Orlen is considering acquiring a stake in the PCK Schwedt refinery in Germany, but only if the German Government decides to abandon Russian energy group Rosneft as its shareholder, reported Bloomberg News, citing Orlen CEO Daniel Obajtek.
With the stake acquisition, Orlen intends to ensure supplies to its own gas station network in Germany.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the German authorities took the refinery’s operational control. However, Rosneft PJSC still owns a 54% stake in the refinery, while Shell and Eni own the remaining stake.
Obajtek was cited by the news agency as saying in an interview: “We don’t want to enter into any relationship with investors from the East. This issue needs to be first resolved by the German side.”
In April 2023, Germany approved a law to allow it to seize assets of Rosneft in the country, but the process is yet to start.
People familiar with the matter said that German Government has no immediate plans to offload Rosneft shares. It is open to an offer from Poland.
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By GlobalDataThe German Government is expected to renew the temporary trusteeship, which was adopted in September 2022.
Obajtek said: “In the case of the Schwedt refinery, we should assess its impact on the Polish market in the future and analyse the sense of such investment from this point of view.”
Orlen, which has refineries in Poland, Lithuania and the Czech Republic, is planning to invest 320bn zlotys ($78bn) in its operations in this decade.
