* Hellenic Petroleum to shed 150 administrative staff
* Plans 300 hires in core refinery business
* Hellenic looking for partners in Egyptian oil, gas project
(Adds labour union reaction, sixth paragraph)
By Harry Papachristou
ATHENS, June 12 (Reuters) - Greece's biggest refiner, Hellenic Petroleum, launched a voluntary retirement scheme for administrative staff to save costs as it plans to add workers in its core refining business, its CEO said on Friday.
The company is cutting operating costs and wants to boost earnings from its core refining and marketing operations, targeting a doubling in operating profit by 2012.
"The plan targets mainly the administrative division," Hellenic Petroleum Chief Executive John Costopoulos told Reuters in an interview. "Our workforce's average age is 47 to 48, we want a younger profile."
Under the scheme, the company will offer early retirement to about 150 employees by late summer. Eligible staff can apply by the end of the second quarter, Costopoulos said.
The group separately plans to hire about 300 new employees in its refining business, where it plans to spend around 1.4 billion euros ($1.97 billion) by 2012 to upgrade facilities at Aspropyrgos and Elefsina, near Athens, and Thessaloniki.
Employees are likely to take up the offer, a labour union official estimated. "I expect the people targeted by the plan will accept it," Athanasios Stamoulis, secretary general of Hellenic Petroleum's labour union, told Reuters. Hellenic is active in 10 countries in southeast Europe and the Middle East. Activities range from oil exploration and refining to petrol stations and petrochemicals.
The company is eyeing adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) of 1 billion euros in 2012, from 514 million last year.
EGYPT, DEPA
Costopoulos, who took over as CEO in December 2007, said Hellenic was looking for partners in an oil and gas exploration concession it owns at West Obayed, Egypt, to share some of the development costs.
"We may consider a partial farm-out by the end of this year," he said.
Costopoulos expressed scepticism as to whether the government's search for a strategic investor in Greece's natural gas monopoly, DEPA, in which Hellenic owns a 35 percent stake, would add value.
"At this stage, I don't see what a strategic investor could bring to the table," he said.
Finding a strategic investor would not necessarily advance Greece's policy goal to become a hub in the transit of natural gas from Central Asia to Europe, he said.
"I think the safest, most intelligent thing to do would be to leverage up DEPA's 100 percent subsidiary DESFA, which ... is overcapitalised, and potentially DEPA itself, and return cash to its shareholders," he said.
Greece, which owns 65 percent of DEPA and 35 percent of Hellenic Petroleum, last month picked four investment banks to advise it on the sale of a stake in DEPA to a strategic investor.
"An IPO of DESFA... would bring more transparency into the valuation of DEPA," Costopoulos said.
DESFA is 100 percent-owned by DEPA.
Hellenic Petroleum shares have risen 43 percent since the beginning of the year, beating a 34 percent increase in the Athens General index. Some analysts attribute the rise to the higher refining margins Hellenic has enjoyed on its fuel oil products over the previous months.
The shares trade at about 14 times earnings, compared with about 11 for Greece's second-largest refiner, Motor Oil, whose production is more geared towards diesel oil products, where refining margins dropped. ($1=.7108 Euro) (Editing by Will Waterman and Simon Jessop)