Czechs Reluctant to Break Oil Monopoly

PRAGUE -- The head of the Czech state-owned petrochemical conglomerate Chemapol a.s. has said the company welcomes foreign partners but will not split up parts of the industry, such as refineries, to suit foreign investors."If we speak about entrance of foreign partners as part of the whole (of the industry) then I would say yes, we are already prepared, we're in negotiations," Chemapol chairman Vaclav Junek told reporters at a news conference last week."If it is mutually beneficial conditions, it's only good for Czech industry that suitable, innovative and economically strong partners would share in it," he said.Junek did not say with whom the company was negotiating.In May the government rejected an offer by a consortium of four western oil companies -- Agip, Royal Dutch/Shell, Total and Conoco -- to take a 49 percent stake in the country's two major oil refineries.The consortium, which wanted to break the refineries away from the rest of the country's petrochemical industry, had bid $180 million for assets of the refineries, and pledged to invest another $520 million.But the government, under heavy pressure from domestic companies, said it would take a "Czech only" approach to restructuring the entire industry.Government ministers said they would submit new plans for the overhaul of the industry in the next few weeks.Chemapol officials also said Friday that they expected the company's level of oil imports to stabilize this year after a sharp drop in 1993."If we speak of imports they should roughly be the same level as last year," Miroslav Pribyl, Chemapol's vice general director told reporters at a news conference.Chemapol, the main importer of crude oil in the Czech Republic, said its 1993 imports fell to 5.8 million tons from 8.2 million tons in 1992."The fall in value of imports was caused primarily by a considerable reduction in imports of crude oil...due to the cessation of imports for Slovnaft, Bratislava," Vaclav Junek, Chemapol's chairman, said in a statement.Chemapol stopped importing oil for Slovak refinery company Slovnaft, a.s. as part of the split of the Czechoslovak federation in January 1993.The company reported after-tax profits had fallen in 1993 to 415 million crowns ($14 million) from 501 million in 1992.Chemapol's revenues -- in sales including oil, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, rubbers and plastics -- fell to 42 billion crowns from 54.5 billion the year before.