Gdansk oil refinery to get go ahead for sale to UK Rotch Energy consortium

The sale of Poland's second largest oil company, Rafineria Gdanska, to U.K.-based consortium Rotch Energy should be approved today by Nafta Polska, the state agency responsible for privatization of the fuel sector. The approval will pave the way for the completion of the long-delayed sale of the Baltic coast refiner with annual processing capacity of more than four million tons of crude. Industry insiders value the sale of a 75% stake in the refinery at $300-350 million. "I expect Nafta Polska will approve the sale of Gdanska this Monday, so that I can ask the cabinet to give the final go-ahead to this deal later this month," Barbara Litak-Zarebska, deputy treasury minister, said on Friday. Rotch Energy, a U.K.-based private investment group with real estate and retail fuel interests, was selected in June for further negotiations on the deal over Hungary's MOL. Last year the refinery made a net profit of 182.8 million zlotys, boosting it's return on equity ratio (ROE) to 16.2 percent in 2000 from 12 percent in the previous year. (Reuters) T.J