Montenegrin Minister of Capital Investments Mladen Bojanic said that, if it turns out that Montenegrin part of the Adriatic Sea contains financially viable hydrocarbon deposits, the state is not planning to build a refinery, but the entire volume of extracted oil and gas will be exported.
Minister Bojanic said that it should be known by the end of this year whether Montenegro has oil and gas, in what amounts and whether their exploitation will be commercially feasible. He added that first announcement are very optimistic and that the parameters followed during the exploratory drilling show the presence of oil reserves. In case the commercially feasible deposits are found, it would take few years to prepare the site for commercial exploitation.
In late March, the consortium of Italian Eni and Russian Novatek has launched the first exploratory oil drilling activities in the sea area between Bar and Ulcinj, some 28 kilometers from the coast.
In May 2014, three consortia submitted bids in the tender for awarding the hydrocarbon exploration and production concessions in the Adriatic Sea. Tender referred to 13 concession blocks with overall area of 3,000 km2. The bids were submitted by the consortium of Marathon Oil Corporation (USA) and OMV (Austria), consortium of Eni (Italy) and Novatek (Russia) and consortium of Energean Oil & Gas (Greece) and Mediterranean Oil and Gas (England). In February 2016, the concession contract for oil and gas exploration in the Adriatic Sea has been signed with Italian-Russian consortium consisting of companies Eni and Novatek, which includes two exploration periods that last four plus three years, while the contract with Energean for two offshore blocks, 4219-26 and 4218-30, was signed in March 2017. Energean is still in the process of finding a partner for the project.
