Poland's PKN may seek access to oil in Azerbaijan - economy minister

Poland's largest oil refiner PKN Orlen is in talks with Azerbaijan's SOCAR in a move to gain access to oil deposits in Azerbaijan, Poland's outgoing economy minister was cited by daily Parkiet as saying.

'Orlen is ready to invest in the Azerbaijani oil sector and start to seek oil in deposits, whose magnitude we will specify later,' Piotr Wozniak said.

State-owned PKN has failed so far to build a successful upstream division, which it has said for years is a priority to cut its dependence on Russian supplies.

Azerbaijan, which is to build the Odessa-Brody-Gdansk pipeline in cooperation with Poland, is one of world's biggest oil producers, with joint deposits around the Caspian Sea said to equal 30 bln barrels, or 10 pct of global reserves.

Source: By Adrian Krajewski, forbes.com