Drilling of Croatia’s Adriatic Coast Around the Corner as Seismic Imaging Boats Arrive

The CEO of the Norwegian seismic imaging services company Spectrum Geo believes Croatia can become the next Norway. Rune Eng, talking to daily Vecernji list in Zagreb, confirmed that this week boats will arrive on Croatia’s Adriatic coast to undertake seismic surveys of oil and gas reserves in Croatia’s Adriatic sea.

The Norwegians will occupy the Adriatic coast for around six months as it ‘photographs’ over 1200 kilometres of coast. Eng says that Norway decided to go down the path Croatia is now going down with oil and gas exploration in the 1960’s, and believes that Croatia can economically flourish as a nation in the same way through its reserves as Norway did, considering both nations have similar sized populations. With technology significantly more advanced 50 years on, Eng is confident that the Oslo-based company will successfully sell the acquired seismic data from the Croatian coast for a tidy profit to a large oil and gas corporation who will then begin exploitation and production.

How soon can all of this be expected to happen? Spectrum expect to have results from their surveys in the first half of 2014, with tenders then put out for the exploitation and production contract later that year with drilling starting around most likely in 2015. Eng says it is a sensible move from the Croatian government, just as it was in the 1960’s in Norway. Not sure environmentalists would agree with Mr. Eng. The Croatian parliament recently ratified the new Hydrocarbons Exploitation Act in Croatia.