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Alerts Energy Infrastructure / Innovations 18 December, 2023 7:35 am   

Two Polish companies lost the fight for a German refinery

IMG_20221111_135538_693_2-1536×991 Schwedt Refinery. Picture by Aleksandra Fedorska

Shell’s minority stake in the German refinery Schwedt will go to the Prax Group from the UK after talks on this issue with Poland’s Unimot. Earlier, Orlen had failed to take over the shares of the Russian Rosneft, which remains the majority shareholder of the plant.

Shell has announced that it will sell its 37.5% stake in PCK Schwedt to the UK-based Prax Group. Earlier it has been reported that Poland’s Unimot had been also interested in the shares. However, BiznesAlert.pl has reported that the talks had failed.

54.17 percent of the shares still belong to the Russian Rosneft Deutschland, but they are under the trusteeship of the German government after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. BiznesAlert.pl has also written that Orlen, which with the support of Polish and German governments could have end Rosneft’s shareholding, was interested in the stake.  However, Berlin has not decided to make this move and is keeping the refinery in limbo, i.e. a trusteeship.

Warsaw demanded derusification from Berlin, but to no avail. Currently, it warns that oil supplies from Kazakhstan to Schwedt are carried out using Russian oil pipelines and raw material physically coming from Russia, as first reported by BiznesAlert.pl.

Reuters / Wojciech Jakóbik