2008-10-30

Five companies apply for oil prospecting in Bosnia

Energoinvest - Bosnian company leading prospecting operations has reported that Transglobal Petroleum (Texas, USA), Longwiew Capital Partners (Canada) through it's subsidiary Seed Rock, Delta Hydrocarbons (Holland), MOL (Hungary) and INA (Croatia) have submitted their letters of intent regarding prospecting for oil in Bosnia.

Other companies from Austria, Germany, UK, Persian Gulf and Malaysia have also shown interest but are still to submit formal offers once the tender gets published.

So far the most interesting proposal has been submitted by Longwiew Capital Partners whose delegation has been to Sarajevo for discussions.

Prospecting is being planned in three different regions in Bosnia and above mentioned companies are ready to invest 80 to 100 million $US initially, per region . American Transglobal Petroleum is also offering to invest around 600 million $US in building an oil refinery with a capacity of 50.000 barrels a day.

The tender is to be published by the end of the year.

2008-10-26

Coal mines generate losses

As I wrote before coal mines and coal plants are a big headache for Bosnian economy. Despite those facts Bosnian political decision makers continue to pump tax payers money into those economically and environmentally devastating fields.

Recently published facts show that eight mines (Kreka, Banovići, Đurđevik, Kakanj, Breza, Zenica, Bila i Gračanica) are 11,1 million KM (ca 5.5 million €) in minus.

At the same time those mines haven't payed health insurance and retirement fees for 12.600 miners to an equivalent of 170 million KM (85 million €). They owe their suppliers 48 million KM (24 million €) while 123 million KM (61,5 million €) of taxes are yet to be paid.

The combined loss of those eight mines reaches 352,1 million KM (176,05 million €) which clearly speaks for closure of those coal mines and investment of all that tax payer's money into something more lucrative, such as alternative energy, road and rail-road infrastructure or educational programs for all those unemployed who can't get any work due to lack of vocational training or poor education.