“Orlen is aggressively pushing blunt propaganda, buying ads and fueling false narratives. Apparently, they operate on the assumption that a lie repeated a thousand times will become the truth. The current CEO of the company has also joined this political revenge,” pointed out PiS MEP Daniel Obajtek, former CEO of Orlen. The politician explained step by step how, in his opinion, the current management of the company “distorts reality.”
Orlen boasts about results and investments
Recently, Orlen’s management announced that the company’s profit for the first three quarters of 2025 reached PLN 8.094 billion, an increase of PLN 5.082 billion compared to the same period last year. Despite these positive results, the current performance of the company remains noticeably weaker than during the period when Daniel Obajtek was at the helm.
The current management faces a wave of criticism – it is accused of slow progress in implementing new investments and maintaining high fuel prices despite relatively low global oil prices. At the same time, there is an intense attack on former CEO Daniel Obajtek, who was recently charged by Żurek’s prosecutor’s office with allegedly “causing property damage to Orlen S.A. in the total amount of PLN 393,600.”
Obajtek: This is blunt propaganda
The politician posted an online video in which he stated that Orlen is currently using “blunt propaganda that distorts any kind of reality.”
“First of all, the investments they are talking about were initiated by the management I represented. Both the construction of offshore wind farms in the Baltic, gas power plants, and the expansion of broadly defined petrochemical investments. Not to mention acquisitions of stations, or the expansion and modernization of many, many companies that were part of the Orlen group. They talk about record investments, but these are precisely the investments we left behind, because the following years would essentially complete them, which is why these expenditures now appear record-breaking, which they are boasting about, without deciding on any acquisition or future investment,” said Obajtek.
The former CEO of Orlen also commented on the current record valuation of Orlen shares – the company’s capitalization exceeded PLN 117 billion.
The record capitalization of Orlen results from several factors: the merger of Orlen with Energa in 2019, with Lotos and PGNiG in 2022, the dividend paid by the current management from profits generated by their predecessors, and the stabilization of the Polish capital market following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine – explained Obajtek.
The politician also highlighted that fuel prices at Orlen stations are currently very high, despite the barrel of oil being significantly cheaper than a few years ago.
“You cannot compare these fuel prices to those during the outbreak of the war and its first months. Back then, a barrel cost $120, and the dollar was at 4.50 PLN. Today, a barrel is $60, practically half that price. The dollar is at 3.60 PLN. So if you compare those times, when the barrel and the dollar were that low, in my time, the price started with a five for fuels. So there’s no comparison; you must refer solely to the truth,” he said.
In his opinion, the current Orlen management “is drifting and only filing complaints to the prosecutor’s office because they want political blood.”
“For this management to stay in place, it has to give the public certain emotions. This is how they play with the company’s brand and destroy the people who built such a powerful corporation, thanks to which we can feel secure,” he concluded.