Russia's Zarubezhneft negotiates acquisition of OMV's gas stations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia

Russian state-owned oil company Zarubezhneft is looking to acquire 90 gas stations owned by Austria's OMV in Croatia and Bosnia, a local branch executive said Tuesday.

"Our plan is to enlarge our sale network on regional markets, notably in Croatia and Serbia," said Rade Vidakovic, an official of Optima Grupa, Zarubezhneft's branch in Bosnia.

"When OMV announced the sale of its network... we expressed our interest and we are going to make a proposal," Vidakovic told AFP.

OMV, which has been present in Croatia since 1992 and in Bosnia since 2001, said in December it planned to "completely withdraw" from the two countries.

"The goal is to finish the sale of two branches here by the end of 2013. Negotiations with interested parties will start in the coming months and we are open to an entire series of options," a source from Croatia's OMV branch told AFP.

Since the end of 2011, OMV is looking for a buyer of its 63 stations in Croatia and 28 stations in Bosnia. For OMV, the gas station networks in the two Western Balkan countries are not optimally linked to the supply chain. At the moment, OMV´s market share in Croatia is 13%. In Bosnia, the market share is 8%.

According to Poslovni Dnevnik, OMV could earn between 130 and 160 million euros from the sale.