INA OFFICIALLY OWNER OF "WHITE NIGHTS" OIL FIELDS

ZAGREB, Feb 5 (Hina) - The Croatian oil company INA on January 29 registered ownership of the Siberian oil field "White Nights", purchased at the end of last year, the company reported on Friday. In early November last year, INA purchased the Russian oil company "White Nights" in Moscow. The Russian company owns a licence to produce oil and gas on two oil fields in west Siberia. The technical reserves of the two oil fields are estimated at 60 million barrels while the amounts which can be extracted without applying any additional methods are estimated at 10 million barrels. INA representatives said that the company planned to extract approximately 400,000 tons of crude oil this year, and later one million annually. The purchased oil fields are connected with pipelines with the oil refinery in Sisak (a town about 50 km south-east of Zagreb), which will enable the processing of Russian oil in Sisak, if the price is favourable. This is the first time INA has purchased discovered oil reserves, the main reason for it being the fact that the company is already extracting the last reserves from oil fields in Croatia. INA bought "White Nights" for US $20 million. One half of this amount will be paid in cash over two years, while the rest will be returned through the company's operations on other oil fields it owns. (hina) jn rml