Real Pannonian Sea of gas, worth several billion dollars according to real estimations, is placed below Vojvodina, but the biggest problem so far has been how to pull this gas out. However, these problems will be probably solved soon.
Serbia is energy dependent country, especially when it comes to natural gas because around 90 percent of required amounts are imported from Russia. It is hard to say if the new drilling technologies and bigger investments in research will contribute to bigger production or this energy import decrease what would mean decrease of energy dependence, but we can say that production of natural gas is being researched and increased in NIS.
It is stated from NIS that usage of the new drilling technology has contributed to discovery of gas production increase. The new drilling method with smaller diameter, “slimhole” method is applied for the first time in this area for the purpose of oil and gas research and the project is done in Science-Technology Center of NIS. Two drillings with smaller diameter that confirmed research expectations have been done near Melenci by Zrenjanin so far. Investigation of one of the drillings showed the existence of two smaller gas sites and three smaller gas sites were discovered near second drilling. These sites are being investigated at the moment. NIS plans to open 25 drillings in total by the end of 2016 by using this “slimhole” technology.
670 million of cubic meters of natural gas were produced with 95 drillings in exploitation last year. Estimated gas reservoirs in Serbia amount 30 billions of cubic meters and they are possible to be bigger, but we need to investigate that. It is, of course, hard to say how big the value of these reservoirs is, we can only predict. If purchase price of cubic meter of gas which is imported from Russia is 0,4 dollars there is 12 billion dollars underground…
