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Central Europe
March 23, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 14
"We're standing here because the public's mis- trust and outrage cannot be resolved with criti- cism, arrogance or by ignoring the suspicions that organised crime is at the highest places of Slovak politics,” Kiska stated.
Pellegrin needs not only to calm down the political arena but also the Slovakian public. He has some time to breathe, since the organisers of the For a Decent Slovakia protest movement, which attracted 50,000 people on March 9 and 65,000 protesters on March 16 in Bratislava alone, cancelled another rally planned for this Friday, March 23.
Six dead after storage tank explodes at Unipetrol site near Prague
bne IntelliNews
Six people were killed by an explosion that ripped through a storage tank at a production site of sole Czech refiner and petrochemical producer Unipetrol on the morning of March 22.
The deaths – confirmed by rescue officials – occurred during the cleaning of the tank by
new contractors when an electrical short circuit ignited gas, according to local government officials who spoke to Czech media outlets including news server idnes.cz.
The tragedy at Unipetrol’s production complex in Kralupy nad Vltavou north of Prague is another blow to the company which has been steadily recovering healthy petrochemical sales since it reconstructed its ethylene steam cracker, de- stroyed by an August 2015 explosion at Unipet-
"Since the beginning, we have represented the voice of the people and we are proud of what it has achieved. Now we have come to the point from which we see that the following steps are dividing society, and from the civic position, we can say that there are actions that should take place in the streets and steps that should take place in parliament. There are moments that aren't easy, but that's what freedom, responsibility and decency are partly about. Decent people respect the Constitution," said the organisers.
A view of the Unipetrol production site in Kralupy nad Vltavou.
rol’s main production site in Litvinov in North Bohemia near the German border. The plastics producer was also in May 2016 knocked out of its stride by a blast at the Kralupy site which wrecked facilities including petroleum conver- sion technology.
Having become highly profitable since the re- constructed cracker was launched in late 2016 – helped by the relatively low price of crude oil used as feedstock in petrochemical production and in- surance payments on the wiped out cracker – Un- ipetrol has been preparing for a delisting from the Prague Stock Exchange. State-controlled Polish refining and petrochemical production group PKN Orlen, which took over 63% of Unipetrol in a 2005 privatisation, in early February announced it was buying another 32% of the company from minor-