Bangchak Petroleum, a majority state-owned oil refiner and retailer in Thailand, said it wants to open five petrol stations in Cambodia, with the first station opening in 2014, the Bangkok Post reported last week.

Tui Rutten, president of the Thai Business Council of Cambodia did not want to comment on the issue, but said generally, Bangchak is a big player trading in Thailand’s financial market and would do proper research before new investments.

“Normally, Bangchak is a very well-known company in the financial market in Thailand and most of the projects that they’ve done they probably have done research [for],” she said.

“For such a big company, I don’t think that they just come into the area when they didn’t do the research…They probably believe that it will be profitable before they’re going to invest.”

Bangchak did not reply to an email sent yesterday.

Earlier this month, the Malaysia Edge reported that Malaysian oil and gas company Petronas is eyeing Cambodia’s oil and gas sector again. Petronas opened in Cambodia in 1994 with 19 stations that dwindled to one before exiting the Kingdom in April 2010.

“I have no knowledge about that,” said Diep Sareiviseth, a spokesperson at the Cambodia National Petroleum Authority regarding Bangchak’s plans.

Bangchak shares fell 2.7 per cent yesterday.

To contact the reporter on this story: Anne Renzenbrink at [email protected]