MOL Group

With war still ongoing in Syria, plans for Croatian energy company INA to regain control over the gas and oil fields it partly owns in the country are viewed with some doubt by a leading expert.

Former general director of INA Davor Stern told BIRN that it is hard to say if regaining control over the fields is physically possible.

Croatia's planned purchase of the shares of the national energy company INA from the Hungarian energy company MOL is bound to increase Croatia's public debt, an economic analyst told BIRN.

Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said on Christmas Eve that purchasing MOL's share of INA - 49.1 per cent of the shares - can be done without enlarging the public debt.

Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia have signed a joint declaration supporting the idea to link their countries' gas transmission systems, Hungary's Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó announced on Thursday evening.

Romania's OMV Petrom, the largest oil and gas company in the country, is to start delivering natural gas to Moldova on January 1 through the Iasi-Ungheni pipeline, the company said.

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Klesch Group, owned by US billionaire Gary Klesch, is interested in buying the shares in the Croatian energy company INA owned by Hungarian energy giant MOL.

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Arbitration over the fate of the Croatian national energy company, INA, between the Republic of Croatia and the Hungarian energy company, MOL, started on Friday before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, ICSID, in Washington.

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Russia's Lukoil has announced it is selling its filling station networks in Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.

"The decision to sell the assets was taken as part of the effort to optimize Lukoil's business in petroleum product marketing," the company said in a statement.

Croatian government has plans to buy out shares in Croatia’s INA company owned by the Hungarian energy company MOL - to regain control over the country’s only major energy concern - broke down at the end of last week.

The government in Zagreb wanted to add the 49.1 per cent of shares that MOL owns in INA to the Croatian state’s existing stake of 44.84 per cent.