Minority shareholder, Dutch company MEI, speculates about possibility of closing down Paramo refinery in Czech Republic as majority shareholder Unipetrol/PKN Orlen plans to move whole production process to Poland, CTK informed. This could bring economic rationale of production process to the end.
Our view:
Paramo's EGM scheduled on October 5, will most probably bring more light into this issue. The closure of this minor, hardly profitable refinery could be beneficial for Unipetrol. Paramo is specialized on heavy products, such as bitumen and lubes, but in the past two years refineries earned much more on the light end of their product slate. Therefore, we can imagine that speculation on the closure is not groundless.
Since Paramo is only marginal part of Unipetrol group, therefore we don't expect this news as price moving for Unipetrol today.