Polish entrepreneur Ryszard Krauze's Petrolinvest has bought significant stakes in four Kazakh companies owning large oil fields in that country, daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza reported on Saturday.
The daily said Krauze, the owner of Polish software company Prokom, paid $400 million for the companies and plans to invest a further $400 million in developing the fields.
According to the newspaper, Krauze said the overall capacity of the fields stood at around two billion barrels. "These are diverse oil fields, in various locations and of various depths. These estimates are confirmed by independent companies," Gazeta Wyborcza quoted Krauze as saying. Krauze also said he wanted Petrolinvest to debut on the Warsaw bourse within 9-12 months.
The investment comes as Poland's government is discussing how to lower the country's nearly total dependence on Russian oil and gas supplies. The government has stepped up its efforts at diversification ever since a pricing dispute between Ukraine and Russia briefly disrupted gas deliveries to Europe at the start of the year.