Gazprom Neft interested in Petrohemija – Negotiations about increased delivery of gas to Serbia ongoing

Gazprom Neft and NIS are interested in Petrohemija and the talks with the Russians will be intensified in the next period, Serbian Minister of Energy Aleksandar Antic stated yesterday after a meeting with representatives of Gazprom and Gazprom Neft in Saint Petersburg.

Antic pointed out that Petrohemija’s operations were successful at the moment, but that it needed a strategic partner for investments.

– Primarily, an investment in the polypropylene line, which should secure long-term stable operations for Petrohemija, under all kinds of economic conditions and regardless of the potential turbulences in the global price of oil – Antic said.

He said that he had had very successful talks with the chairman of Gazprom, Alexey Miller, and the chairman of Gazprom Neft, Alexander Dyukov, about joint projects and investments.

– We agreed with Miller that the deliveries of Russian gas to Serbia had increased by 6% since the beginning of the year compared to the same period in the previous year. We agreed that this is primarily down to the industrial growth in Serbia, the growth of the GDP by 4.5% and the expectations that those trends would continue – Antic said.

He pointed out that talks about potential increases in gas delivery to Serbia would continue.

– We talked about strengthening the gas-transport system o Serbia, primarily the route from Bulgaria to the Hungarian border and about a very important question of increasing the capacity of the Banatski Dvor underground storage. They promised us that the Russian side, that is, Gazprom and Gazpromexport, would prepare the study of several of the proposed technical solutions as soon as possible and reach the final investment decision and that we would start increasing the capacities of this storage very soon, which is very important for Serbia’s energy security – Antic said.

He also said that he had talked to Dyukov about the operations of NIS and added that it was very important that NIS had adopted an ambitious strategy of company development, including big goals for the development of NIS as the leader in the Western Balkans.

As he says, the aim is for the investment cycle to continue. He reminded that important projects were realized at NIS, such as the Deep Processing facility, an investment worth EUR 300 million. There was also talk about the project of construction of the thermal power plant and heating plant Pancevo, developed by NIS.

HIP-Petrohemija a.d. Pančevo

JSC Gazprom Neft Moscow

NIS a.d. Novi Sad

Ministarstvo rudarstva i energetike Republike Srbije

NIS

Gazprom

Gazpromneft

Aleksandar Antic

strategic partner for Petrohemija

privatization of Petrohemija

production of polypropylene

polypropylene

price of oil

Alexey Miller

Alexander Dyukov

delivery of Russian gas to Serbia

gas transport system of Serbia

underground gas storage Banatski Dvor

Gazpromexport

NIS operations

NIS Deep Processing

thermal power plant Pancevo