Couple of more tidbits One of the main Polish shale-gas related portals is https://www.gazlupkowy.pl (literally meaning shale-gas dot pl). There are a number of articles on there mentioning BNK Petroleum - one of them (dating from January 22, 2013) is that the company is awaiting permission to drill deeper than originally planned as well as I believe do some horizontal drilling around the Gapowo B1 well which has exhibited over 20x the shale gas content than in previous BNK drill locations (thus making the Gapowo B1 well in Poland the equivalent in expectations - i.e. high resource content - as are the expectations for the current Caney property being drilled in the US location).
Keep in mind that gaining permits for these types of things in Poland can last months - since the article (https://gazlupkowy.pl/bnk-petroleum-zamierza-przeprowadzic-szczelinowanie-hydrauliczne-na-odwiercie-gapowo-b1/) is dated January 22nd, it means that we are now months away from the original communique and we may get some news regarding that in the near future...
Another interesting article is from June 22nd 2012 (https://gazlupkowy.pl/orlen-rozmawia-z-bnk-petroleum-o-partnerstwie-lupkowym/) stating that Orlen, a Polish oil comapny, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlen) the world's 31st largest oil company and one of Europe's largest with revenues of 26 billion euros - was in talks with partnering up with BNK Petroleum to join forces. In that article it is stated that BNK Petroleum is considered one of the favourites.
Having said the above, the article above does mention that existing geological exploration laws prevent certain partnerships from taking place between large corporations and exploration companies (which is one of the main reason why the Ministry of the Environment is actually working towards changing some of these laws as I've mentioned in my previous post). In fact, certain common types of partnerships that are generally undertaken are specifically forbidden by existing laws - since they are meant for established resources rather than exploration stage.
I believe these laws stem from the fact that back in the 70's Poland's primary source of energy was actually coal and all the coal companies were essentially state owned since in the 70's Poland was under communist rule and there was no such thing as a "private" company, therefore certain partnership types were basically unheard of and there was no need for any particular modification for this law - that of course is now not the case.
The articles I am mentioning are unfortunately (for you guys) in Polish ... so you'll need to take my word for it ...
Cheers,
9th0