Page 10 - Euroil Week 35 2019

EurOil POLICY EurOil
Croatia awards new projects in licensing round
CROATIA
The round attracted foreign and local players.
CROATIA has awarded oil and gas exploration rights to two local and two foreign operators in what is its rst licensing round in ve years. e six blocks that have been handed out all lie in Croatia’s well-developed Pannonian Basin, in the country’s northern atlands.
Croatia’s INA – part-owned by the govern- ment and part-owned by Hungary’s MOL, has won a licence to the Drava-03 and Northwestern Croatia-01 blocks, state hydrocarbon agency AZU revealed on August 29. Meanwhile, a local group called Crodex has secured rights to the the Sava-11 and Sava-12 areas. Canada’s Vermil- lion Energy was given the Sava-07 block, while US-based Aspect was awarded Sava-06.
Croatia opened a pair of oil and gas tenders last year as part of e orts to spur investment in development. In the rst competition, Zagreb o ered rights to seven blocks spanning 14,272 square km of the Pannonian Basin. e deadline for bids passed on June 28, with only six of the blocks having received applications.
e second contest will remain open until September 10 and is o ering 12,134 square km of acreage in the frontier Dinarides Basin. Seis- mic surveys were carried out in the area in the 1950s, but since then little to no exploration has taken place.
Croatia has been producing oil and gas since the 1940s, but production has been in decline for decades. e government wants to reverse this trend, to give its tourism-reliant economy a kick- start and help curb fuel imports, most of which come from Russia. To ensure the latest tenders were successful, the authorities passed a new law making it easier for operators to make the tran- sition from the exploration to the production phase at projects.
The winning bidders will initiate contract talks with the government, with the aim of starting exploration in the second half of 2020, AZU said. ey will be given a ve-year research period, and if they make a discovery during this time, a 25-year exploration period will ensue.™
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 35 05•September•2019