Longer refinery outage to hit profits at Unipetrol

...spokeswoman on Wednesday.

Unipetrol's main refinery in Litvinov, operated by its Ceska Rafinerska subsidiary, has been mostly out of operation, beyond a planned shutdown, due to an accident at a neighbouring plant last weekend which cut hydrogen supplies.

"Our estimate (of the impact on earnings) as of now is several hundred million crowns. We cannot have an exact estimate because the shutdown has not ended yet," spokeswoman Michaela Lagronova said.

She added press reports on the impact being 200 million crowns were not accurate.

She said the profit reduction would come on top of the company's estimate of an earnings drop caused by planned modernisation shutdowns at Unipetrol units this year.

In August, Chief Executive Francois Vleugels said this year's shutdowns would reduce Unipetrol's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) by 2 billion crowns.

Then he also forecast full-year operating profit (EBIT) of 6.6 billion crowns.

Lagronova said Unipetrol would announce on Monday when it could resume fuel production at the Litvinov refinery.

Unipetrol , a unit of Poland's PKN , holds a 51 percent stake in Rafinerska.

Italy's ENI and Royal Dutch Shell hold minority stakes in Rafinerska.

[PRAGUE/Reuters/Finance.cz]