Investment of over 547m EUR in NIS - tender for procurement of about 2m tons of crude oil in next few days

- The tender for procurement of about 2m tons of crude oil will be announced within next few days - Kiril Kravčenko, the Director General of “Petroleum Industry of Serbia”, announced.

According to the available information, this tender will have different terms of delivery, and the deadlines will be extended from 30 to 45-60 days. It was not specified on Thursday if the majority owner of NIS, Russian “Gazpromneft”, was going to bid on that tender , but crude oil was already purchased directly from Russians on several occasions in 2008.

New Director General of NIS said for Russian daily newspaper "Vremja novostej" on Thursday that the total amount of investments in modernization of NIS could exceed 547m EUR. Kravčenko confirmed that about 200m USD would be invested in 2009, that is, 40% of projected 547m USD. He announced that that company planned to end the year without losses. According to the preliminary estimates of auditors, the losses at the end of year 2008 amounted to 40m USD.

- We have seriously taken the expansion of network of gas stations outside Serbia in consideration because the units of NIS should start working at full capacity prior to year 2012, and they should start producing over 7m tons of oil derivatives per year – Kravčenko pointed out.

Russian "Gazpromneft" is considering the development of petrochemical business because NIS owns 20.5% of "Petrohemija", which owes 70m EUR to NIS. People in NIS used to mention the possibility of increasing the share through conversion of debt, but all the decision will be made in agreement with the Government of Serbia.