Gdansk Refinery and Petrobaltic merger - fact or fiction?

The president of Gdansk Refinery (RG) Pawel Olechnowicz is considering a plan to merge his company with Petrobaltic, a Baltic based oil mining company and then to float the new venture on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE). According to Olechnowicz even if the Lukoil consortium does not become an investor in RG, his company does not necessarily have to merge with PKN Orlen, there is an alternative. His plan is to create a capital group around RG and to list its shares on the WSE. A merger with Petrobaltic would then raise the capital of RG and give it the necessary funds to develop. RG needs between $200 million $300 million to expand its network of petrol stations. Petrobaltic sells around 300,000 tons of oil per annum and is scheduled to be privatized later this year. Olechnowicz believes that after a merger, RG would no longer need a strategic investor, it would be enough to list the new enterprise on the WSE and sell a 20% stake to a sector investor. Treasury Minister Wieslaw Kaczmarek, told Parkiet, "I do not want to comment on such a possibility at the moment, as it would be pure speculation". (Parkiet, p. 1) P.W.