BOGDANKA KNOCKED-DOWN BY A KANGAROO 1/2
First, a body blow was stroke by Kompania Weglowa and its 2015 spring sale, which completely ruined the business. Next one was even worst: Enea decided to hit bellow the belt and went after their market value. Strike three came on Friday, from a company tied to a country with a long boxing tradition, at least among their national animals.
On today’s conjoined press conference of Enea and its new daughter LW Bogdanka, CEO of that last one was presenting the final audited results for 2015, confirming net loss of 279.6m PLN. As if the loss and facing the fact that his company lost its stock value by 50% within just one year were not enough for him, he was also reminded of an adverse decision of Provincial Administrative Court in Warsaw (WSA) that was announced on Wednesday, in regards to coal deposits right next to Bogdanka’s fence.
K-6 and K-7 are promising areas for hard coal mining, located in Cycow, just 10km from where Zbigniew Stopa eats lunch in his office. Thinking of further development, since 2010 Bogdanka was planning to get a mining license on these fields, but two years later Australian company PD Co stole their thunder and got a search permit on them and a few other deposits surrounding LWB. Since then, Australians made a lot of marketing and PR fuss about their Lublin Coal Project and Jan Karski mine, promising best quality coal (7000kcal) at a cost of next to nothing (25 USD/Mt, according to PFS presented two weeks ago).
Ignoring PD Co and their search, Bogdanka decided to apply for mining license anyway, arguing that they are the only ones in the region with equipment and background sufficient enough to actually start any real mining operations in the area, but they failed in Ministry of Environment. Appealing in WSA also brought them no success, as the court acknowledged PD Co’s anteriority a week ago (due to the expenditures they had with the search). Zbigniew Stopa was clearly irritated by this decision and two days later announced further appeal to the National Administrative Court.
22 MARCH 2016
BOGDANKA KNOCKED-DOWN BY A KANGAROO 2/2
Few shadows lies on the whole story. Isn’t it puzzling that Australians knew exactly where to look for the LZW golden-coal-vein? Did the former CEO of Bogdanka Miroslaw Taras had anything to do with it, as he was surely aware of LWB’s plans before he left the company conflicted with Supervisory Board and joined PD Co as an advisor? Another question that could be raised: is the whole Jan Karski mine a real deal? Or is it just a tool to bully Bogdanka and force them to buy entire Lublin Coal Project and unblock their expansion?
Also from the political point of view, the story of Australian involvement shapes rather interesting. When we’ve first heard of PD Co, they had a strong back in the government at that time. Artur Kluczny, Vce President of the company was previously the director of PM’s Secretariat. Two members of Supervisory Board were also linked with the PO-PSL government: Jacek H. Jezierski was the former Chief National Geologist and Patrycja Wolinska-Bartkiewicz was an Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Infrastructure.
All that and the fact that new political power in Poland seems to be more national-oriented on the subject of economy, it should be obvious that in the conflict between Australians and LW Bogdanka, PiS will support Polish producer. But money has no nationality and company’s origin is not the case.
Two years ago, one of PD Co’s strongest parliamentary supporters was Beata Mazurek, very influential MP from Chelm region – the same one from which Wolinska-Bartkiewicz comes from. Both ladies do realize, that Jan Karski Mine, which is supposed to be built in their electoral district might bring both local-taxes income and jobs (2,000 estimated) to one of the poorest regions in Poland. Either the mine will be built or not, for Mazurek and her formation it is best to keep Jakimowicz side, despite the fact that he has close links to Platforma Obywatelska. We guess that Zbigniew Stopa just realized that he is on his own now and that’s probably why he is grinding his teeth so much.
