SHELL OIL COMPANY INTERESTED IN BOSNIA'S OIL DEPOSITS

TUZLA, Bosnia (July 3,2008) - The Tuzla Canton PM Enes Mujic was host to a delegation of specialist consultant companies from the UK and Canada. The companies are carrying out an oil market research on behalf of the Shell Oil Company. The Tuzla University is also involved in this research.

The purpose of this visit was to obtain the basic information about Bosnia’s oil potential. Mujic said that regional government would give full support to this research project, especially in the light of demand for petroleum of the local chemical industry. The Canton is also rich in coal and salt.

Shell Oil Company is the United States-based affiliate of Royal Dutch Shell, a multinational oil company of Anglo Dutch origins, which is amongst the largest oil companies in the world.

Dean of the Faculty of Technology and Mining in the northern Bosnian town of Tuzla, Abdulah Basic, told Bosnian media recently that some 500 million tonnes of oil could be located in several locations in northern Bosnia as well as further in southern Bosnia at the depth of between 4,000 and 6,000 metres.

One of the biggest Bosnian construction firms, Energoinvest, carried out a research which proved the existence of oil pools in the northern region of Posavina, as well as in several locations in the south.

Basic says that Energoinvest has the original report which indicates that Bosnia may have oil resources as big as Saudi Arabia or Iraq.

According to several Bosnian experts, British Petroleum, BP and American Oil Company, AMOCO, now also part of BP, were interested in potential oil resources in Bosnia before the 1992-1995 Serbian,Montenegrin and Croatian aggressions against Bosnia.

Yet,after the end of the war, neither the Bosnian government nor international companies showed interest to continue with the research. However this is changing now with the recent skyrocketing of oil prices on global markets.

“First barrels of oil from Bosnia could be excavated as soon as the next 15 years, under the condition that local governments start showing an interest in this,” Basic stated.
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