ZAGREB (Croatia), November 9 (SeeNews) – Croatian blue-chip oil and gas company INA said on Friday it has signed with Italian engineering company Technip a deal for the construction of an 81.2 million euro ($119 million) hydrogen generation unit, part of INA's programme to upgrade its refineries.
"The completion period is 24 months," INA said in a statement issued late on Friday. The unit will be located in INA's oil refinery in Rijeka, on the northern Croatian Adriatic coast. Besides this, INA has an oil refinery in Sisak, central Croatia and runs the biggest chain of petrol stations in Croatia. It explores and drills for oil and gas in Croatia, Angola, Egypt and Syria and is one of the biggest companies by revenue in the Adriatic country.
INA has said earlier that it would invest $1.1 billion by end-2011 to modernise the two refineries and enable them to make oil products meeting the quality standards of the European Union.
Croatia started EU accession talks in October 2005 and hopes to join the bloc by the end of the decade.
INA’s shares closed unchanged at 2,600 kuna on the Zagreb bourse on Friday.
(1 euro=7.3355 Croatian kuna)