Hungarian oil and gas group MOL will buy the gas stations of Polish oil firm Lotos, financial portal Portfolio reports.
The news was first reported by Polish economic radio news show Radio Zet, with the decision expected to be announced next week.
The sale of part of Lotos’s gas stations is linked to the planned takeover of the company by another Polish oli and gas company, PKN Orlen. The European Commission has made the takeover conditional on the sale of 80 percent of Lotos’s filling stations and a 30 percent stake in the company’s Gdansk refinery.
According to Radio Zet, the gas stations will be bought by the MOL Group and a stake in the world’s second-largest oil producer, Saudi Aramco, in Saudi Arabia.
Lotos’s network includes about 700 to 800 gas stations, which are said to cost an average of $1.5 to 2 million per unit. MOL confirmed in August last year that the company was interested in the Polish retail market.
Integrated oil and gas group MOL is one of Hungary’s largest companies with upstream (exploration and extraction) operations in 13 countries, two refineries and over 2,000 gas stations in nine Central and Eastern European countries.
