Rotch anticipates September completion on Rafineria

British consortium Rotch Energy has been granted the exclusive right to negotiate the purchase of a 75% stake in Poland's second largest liquid fuel producer, Rafineria Gdanska (RG). Currently the refinery is owned by state-run Nafta Polska. Rotch is committed to investing $800 million in the refinery, although in earlier statements the consortium had agreed to pay $1 billion for the stake. Speaking at a news conference yesterday, David T. Wood, deputy president of Kellog Ltd, which is part of the Rotch Energy consortium, said he hoped the deal could be completed by September. He promised that following its purchase of RG, Rotch will invest at least $100 million in setting up a network of 1,000 filling stations across Poland. In addition, the Rotch investment, which aims at making RG one of the three most important refineries in Europe by 2020, envisages the construction of a pipeline linking Gdansk with Plock, north of Warsaw. Wood also reaffirmed Rotch's promise not to lay off any workers for four years. In fact, he said, employment will be expanded at RG's IT department. He also said that the company would undergo a thorough modernization process, so as to keep it up to European Union standards. (Rzeczpospolita, p. B3) A.Z.