The treasury has announced a tender to find privatisation advisers in the sale of Gdansk based oil exploration company Petrobaltic. The treasury claims that it is now working out only the final details of the tender.
Although a little more time is needed before the sale process is announced, there are already three in the running. The first is from an employee and management buy out in a company called Invest-Petro. More than ninety percent of the staff have joined and the company already has PLN1m capital.
Zdzisław Siamion, the person in charge of organisation and management at Petrobaltik says that he realises that of course far more capital will be needed although it is too early yet to go through the details of the buy out, but he claims that there are many ways in which it could be financed.
Siamion does not want to say if an offer will be made with a major player from the fuel sector but there are only two potential partners in this country, PKN Orlen and Rafineria Gdańska.
Last year Petrobaltik produced almost 310,000 tons of oil which comes up to around one percent of domestic requirements.
Agnieszka Cybulska-Nosal of the press office of PKN Orlen said that the company would be interested in the acquisition of the Gdansk based firm as it does not have its own access to exploratory and drilling services.
Rafineria Gdańska could be expected to make an offer for exactly the same reason. A decision from the company is expected once the full details of the offer are known.