The President of UOKiK has issued her consent to the takeover of Petrolot by PKN Orlen. Despite the community dimension of this concentration, upon the undertaking’s request, the European Commission referred the case to the Office

The Office received the notification of PKN Orlen in September this year. The Office was examininig the takeover of Petrolot upon request of the acquiring entity, which applied to the European Commission to have the case considered by the Polish antimonopoly authority. This has been the second case handled this way in the history of UOKiK. For the first time it was ITI and Canal+ which requested the same. The European Commission decided that the Polish antimonopoly office would be the most competent authority to examine the transaction as it has the relevant experience in assessing the air fuel industry, and this transaction undoubtedly affects mainly the Polish market.

PKN Orlen creates a capital group consisting of over 70 companies. The company mainly deals with processing crude oil into unleaded petrol and oils: diesel oil, furnace oil, avgas, as well as LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas), lubricants, plastics and petrochemical products. Petrolot (the entity to be acquired) is under joint control of PKN Orlen and Polskie Linie Lotnicze LOT. It deals with avgas trading and provides services of sale and refuelling planes at Polish airports. As a result of the transaction, PKN Orlen will acquire 100% of Petrologie’s shares.

Today the President of UOKiK granted her consent to the takeover of Petrolot by PKN Orlen. Having conducted the antimonopoly proceedings, the President decided the concentration would not result in a significant restriction of competition.

The concluded analysis revealed that participants to the concentration in fact do not compete with each other, but act on vertically linked markets of rafinery sales of JET avgas and delivery of plane fuel at 11 airports in Poland.

Orlen sells fuel on the first one, whereas Petrolot supplies itself with it. The proceedings of UOKiK revealed that the transaction wouldn’t result in restriction of competition. The domestic competitor of PKN Orlen – Lotos Group has a similar capacity to produce avgas. For this reason the other fuel suppliers will have the alternative to supply themselves with fuel from a producer independent of Petroleum.

The Office decided that the transaction will not impede competition on the avgas supply market at 11 Polish airports where Petrolot conducts its activity. Moreover, this transaction may positively shape the relation of the said company with airlines as PLL LOT will no longer be the entity’s shareholder. Thus, the risk of treating this airline by Petrolot in a priviledged way will be ruled out.

Decisions granting the consent to implement a concentration will expire if the transaction has not been perfomed within 2 years of their issuance. The information on all antimonopoly proceedings in concentration cases conducted by the Office is available at the Office’s website . For more information on rules for merging undertakings, please follow the special materials.

Additional information for the media:
Małgorzata Cieloch, Spokesperson for UOKiK
Department of International Relations and Communication
Pl. Powstańców Warszawy 1, 00-950 Warszawa
Phone: +48 22 827 28 92, 55 60 106, 55 60 314
Fax: +48 22 826 11 86
E-mail: [SCODE]bWFsZ29yemF0YS5jaWVsb2NoQHVva2lrLmdvdi5wbA==[ECODE]