"From 13 to 17 May, units of the Sisak Oil Refinery will be put into operation," the oil and gas company INA said in a statement.
The refinery in Sisak stopped production in mid-January this year after it had processed all domestic crude oil stocks.
During the production break, the refinery was collecting domestic crude oil. Around 50,000 tonnes of oil was transported by a pipeline from the oil fields in the Moslavina region and currently around 150,000 tonnes of oil is in stock.
Workers of the Sisak refinery, who have been opposing the refinery's possible closure, reiterated that the INA management was determined to have the refinery keep processing only domestic oil, which meant that only 30% of its capacity would be used this year.
The workers' representative, Predrag Sekulic, said that re-launching production and stopping it again was very expensive and that it was a pity that oil processing could not run without interruption.
"The plant's insufficiently used capacity and increased costs will again be used as an argument by officials of the Hungarian MOL company (one of INA's two biggest stakeholders, the other one being the Croatian government) that the refinery should be closed down on account of unprofitability. Once production is suspended again, it will take several months to collect new quantities of crude oil for processing. If we operated at full capacity, I am sure that the Sisak refinery would confirm its profitability," said Sekulic.