November the 9th, 2021 - Croatian oil and gas exploration isn't of particular interest to Petrol from neighbouring Slovenia following the postponement of the conclusion of an exploration contract.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Brnic writes, before the Slovenian Petrol completed their acquisition of Crodux Derivati Dva (2), the company informed the Croatian Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development this summer that it was giving up on its exploration mission on two onshore fields, namely S11 and S12, for which it received a concession back in the August of 2019.
According to the official explanation as to why Croatian oil and gas exploration was being put back on the shelf, Crodux first asked for a postponement of the conclusion of the exploration contract and the division of hydrocarbon exploitation, and then reported that they were giving up on the exploration entirely. The exploration period for the above-mentioned fields was set to last five years, and in the event that gas or oil did end up being found, a 25-year period of its subsequent exploitation would have followed.
The Croatian Government's explicit permission for this was a precondition for opening a contract negotiation procedure, followed by the signing of the said contract, but Crodux first cited various difficulties due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and asked for a postponement of the conclusion of the contract, before giving up on it entirely.
The aforementioned ministry received the notification back on June the 7th, and Ivan Cermak withdrew from the position of President of the Management Board of Crodux, which was in the process of taking over from Petrol slightly earlier on, more precisely on June the 1st, meaning that it can be concluded that the new owner of Crodux has no interest in continuing Croatian oil and gas exploration, at least at the moment.
After the withdrawal, a bank guarantee was activated, which pumped a massive 3.75 million kuna into the Croatian state budget.
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