Unipetrol gets rebrand

The company is to be totally subsumed into PKN Orlen and known as Orlen Ceska Republika. This is the end of an era!

This train will need to be repainted!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAdgz1F6gho

PKN Orlen moves a step closer to feedstock independence

Good news for Poland's PKN Orlen this week. All oil producers in the country are reliant on Russian crude; a vestige of the Soviet era.

Now the country's oil group, Grupa Lotos, has signed a letter of intend with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) to co-operate on oil production.

A pipeline which currently runs from Odessa on Ukraine's Black Sea coast to Brody in southern Poland could be extended to Plock, where Orlen is based.


Poland's second-biggest oil concern Grupa Lotos signed a letter of intent with the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) on cooperation concerning technical and economic analyses of potential business projects in Azerbaijan , Poland and other countries, Lotos announced.

According to gowarsaw.eu, "The companies will set up an experts group to probe into potential cooperation fields. Grupa Lotos is a key player on both wholesale and retail fuel markets in Poland and is carrying out upstream operations on the Baltic Sea through its subsidiary Petrobaltic; it also holds stakes in several oil concessions the Norwegian Continental Shelf."

Stormy meeting for Unipetrol?

Unipetrol, part of Poland's PKN Orlen, has had a tough time of it in recent months. Political interference at head office in Poland means every time there is a change of government in Poland, a new set of managers are appointed at Orlen.

This contributed to the resignation of Unipetrol's CEO, Francois Vleugels, earlier this year. He had been busy modernising the group, introducing current best practice in business planning and logistics.

I met Vleugels at EPCA last year and was impressed with the energy he was giving to bringing Unipetrol up to scratch.

Q1 results were pretty disastrous for the group which posted a net loss of koruna (Kc)190.3m ($9.6m/€7m) in the first quarter of the year as sales sharply declined. Unipetrol reversed the K389.5m profits it made in January-March 2008. Revenue for the first three months of this year declined 34.4% year on year to Kc14.5bn.

June 24 Unipetrol holds its annual shareholders' meeting - should be interesting. Then on July 21 Unipetrol is due to present a trading statement for the second quarter.

PKN Orlen may breach loan covenants

PKN Orlen is in trouble again. Constant changes of leadership mean the group has real trouble following a set strategy. Political interference is the key probelm. A change of government means a change at the top for Orlen.

According to ICIS news, quoting ING Bank, Orlen

"could improve its financial health by selling its strategic oil inventories to the Polish state and earning capital on a sale of its 24.4% stake in Polish mobile operator Polkomtel telecom. However, both transactions were unlikely to occur this year, meaning “2009-10 is likely to be challenging for Orlen operationally, and we expect the outlook to worsen", the bank said."