Croatia grants licences for gas, oil exploration in continental area

Croatian government on Wednesday granted licences to three companies for exploration and exploitation of gas and oil in Drava basin in northeastern Croatia.

Ina, an energy company owned by Croatian state and Hungarian energy company MOL and OANDO PLC, a Nigerian company would get a licence for a field respectively, according to governmental announcement.

Vermilion Zagreb Exploration, a company founded in Croatia by Dutch Vermilion Morocco Exploration, a subsidiary of Canadian energy company Vermilion Energy would have four licences for four fields.

For OANDO PLC, it is the first business outside Nigeria, while Vermilion Energy has been operating in Europe, America and Australia.

The companies will receive a licence for a 2-year period of exploration, follow by 3-year period for exploitation. After these five years, companies will have the chance of signing a 25-year-long concession for their exploitation of the fields.

Each company will pay 2.4 million euro (2.7 million U.S. dollars) for signing a contract by July to start their first 2-year-long exploration.

Government estimated that the exploration and exploitation would attract 5.2 billion euros (5.86 billion dollars) of investments in the following years and it would bring new employment and substantial amount of the money on every cubic meter of gas and barrel of oil.

The tender was launched in July 2014 and totally attracted the bids of seven companies.

This tender was second in line after the one launched in April 2014 for exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons in the Adriatic seabed.

Although signing the contract for off-shore tender was initially scheduled for April 2015, it was postponed to June 2015, due to complaints from Croatia's maritime neighbours, Slovenia, Italy and Montenegro. (1 euro = 1.12 U.S. dollars ) Endit