Statoil to expand gas station chain to 220 by 2005

Henning Rasmussen, Polish branch director of Norwegian oil giant Statoil in charge of investment and development issues, announced yesterday in Gdansk that his company plans to expand its chain of gas stations in Poland from 110 to 118 by the end of this year and to 220 stations by 2005, an investment worth roughly $200 million. In collaboration with other oil concerns, Statoil also wants to build a terminal for fuel storage. So far, the Norwegians have sunk $300 million into its Polish operations, and this news confirms that the company has decided to go ahead with its original investment plans that it first made public last spring. Statoil last year sold 400,000 tonnes of liquid fuels on the Polish market, with half of the volume produced in Poland. (Prawo i Gospodarka, p.4)