Igor Chalupec, chairman of the board at Poland's PKN Orlen, who controls the Lithuanian oil refinery Mazeikiu Nafta (Mazeikiai Oil), is likely to lose his job at a supervisory board meeting on Thursday. The Lithuanian daily Lietuvos Rytas reported that Mazeikiu Nafta could be facing a management change. It quoted unnamed sources as saying that CEO Paul Nelson English might have to leave the Lithuanian refinery soon, possibly after the company's annual general meeting in the spring. According to the report, Chalupec may be appointed the chairman of the supervisory board at Mazeikiu Nafta. Currently, he is the chairman of the Lithuanian company's management board. At PKN Orlen, Chalupec is expected to be replaced by his vice-president for audit, Piotr Kownacki, who joined the company only three months ago. The paper also speculated that PKN Orlen might hold an open competition for the CEO position, with Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, a former Polish prime minister, being tipped as a possible contender. Under Chalupec, PKN Orlen has grown into the largest oil group in Central Europe. It also owns the Czech refinery Unipetrol and a network of gas stations in Germany.
