Sale Polish refineries delayed

May 5, 1997 A partial sell-off of Poland's two large oil refineries, tentatively planned for this year, is likely to be delayed until 1998, a spokesman said. The Nafta Polska group will probably present full offers on the privatisation of the refineries, Petrochemia Plock SA and Rafineria Gdansk SA, in early 1998 and the sell-off will take place later, Nafta's Janusz Kwiatkowski told.
"After selecting a privatisation adviser at the end of May, we expect full offers of the two refineries, prepared with the adviser's help, to be ready no sooner than at the start of 1998," he said. Last year, government officials said the sale of about a 30-% stake in the refineries would probably be completed in 1997.
The privatisation has been delayed because the government's plan to put the state-owned fuels distributor CPN SA under Nafta's control, a key stage in the sell-off scheme, has so far not been implemented.
Under the plan, investors in the refineries are to get access to CPN's retail network of some 1,400 filling stations as an incentive for the purchase. The investors would be allowed to increase their stakes in the refineries to majority equity after meeting investment promises.
Kwiatkowski said that 11 companies had bought the second part of the initial privatisation memorandum, which contains many details about the sector and terms of its privatisation. Nafta earlier said that among companies interested in the privatisation were Statoil, Neste, Agip and Shell.