Energy, EU – Baltic States, Good for Business, Lithuania, Oil, Transport

"There is a big room for modernization. This is not a chance, this is a must. Sooner or later, margins will start to lower, now they are high, the forecast is good but it does not take into account the game-changers that might pose big problems," Adam Czyzewski said at a news conference in Vilnius on Tuesday.

"Working assets that we have, refineries like Orlen Lietuva, etc. will create value. We should not be afraid of the threat of electric cars. We might be exposed to efficiency of combustion engine cars but demand in used cars grows. We should not be afraid of a demand shrink. We should be afraid of growing competition from new refineries all over the world where oil is very cheap, like Saudi Arabia," he said.

The economist gave no exact figures as to the group's investments in technological upgrades at the Orlen Lietuva refinery in Mazeikiai, in northwestern Lithuania, underlining that this is a long-term and ongoing process.

According to him, Orlen Lietuva invested around 6o million euros this year.

Poland's Orlen has invested around 1 billion US dollars (EUR 860 mln) in the Mazeikiai refinery since it purchased the facility in 2006.

Orlen Lietuva, which is 100% owned by Poland's Orlen, said that its net profit for January through September 2017 rose by 16% year-on-year to 140.8 million euros (USD 165.4 mln) as sales revenue jumped by 26% to 2.673 billion euros (USD 3.141 b).

The refinery processed 7.165 million tons of crude during the nine months, up 5% year-on-year. Its capacity utilization increased by 5 percentage points to 94%.