PKN Orlen buys 53.7% stake in Baltic refinery for $1.5 bln

Poland's PKN Orlen bought a 53.7% stake in Lithuanian oil refinery Mazeiku Nafta Thursday for $1.49 billion, a spokesperson for the seller, Russia's Yukos, said Thursday.

PKN Orlen, the largest petroleum product retailer in Poland and Central Europe, signed an agreement in May to buy the stake from Yukos International UK B.V., a UK-based subsidiary of bankrupt Russian oil company Yukos.

With the stake, the Polish company also won a tender for another 30.66% in the Baltic region's only refinery owned by the Lithuanian government. PKN Orlen ultimately seeks 100% ownership in the refinery.

After an accident on the Druzhba pipeline in western Russia in July, crude supplies to MN were interrupted, and have not been fully resumed, which had put the deal in doubt. Analysts claimed the cutoff was Moscow's punishment for Lithuania's decision not to sell the company to a Russian oil producer.

The Polish company suspended the deal procedures after a fire broke out at the refinery in mid-October, causing millions of dollars worth of damage and further threatening the deal.

The MN complex comprises the eponymous oil refinery, with an annual capacity of 12 million metric tons, an oil terminal at the port of Butinge with an 8-million-ton annual capacity, and an oil pipeline. Before the agreement with the Polish firm, Russia's LUKoil [RTS: LKOH], Anglo-Russian TNK-BP, and Kazakhstan's KazMunaiGaz had bid for the company.

Source: RIA Novosti, en.rian.ru