Croatia's Adria LNG Consortium Distributes RWE's Stake Among Remaining Partners

The new stakeholding structure is as follows:  E.ON Ruhrgas 39.17%, OMV Gas & Power 32.47%, Total 27.36% and Slovenia's Geoplin 1.0%, the consortium said in a statement made available to SeeNews on Friday.

Croatian companies INA, HEP and Plinacro will be able to form a company called LNG Croatia and get on board of the project soon with a combined 25% share in the consortium under a Croatian government decison dated July 16, the statement said. 

RWE's withdrawal from the LNG terminal contruction project in Croatia will have no impact on the future development and implementation of the project, the consortium said in October.

Adria LNG (www.adria-lng.hr) said earlier it hoped to obtain a location permit from the Croatian authorities in the first quarter of 2010. The LNG terminal, expected to be launched in 2014, will play an important role in providing an alternative route for natural gas to be shipped to central and southeastern Europe.

Together with the construction of gas pipelines for which Plinacro will be responsible, the project's overall tab exceeds one billion euro ($1.5 billion), according to data from the Adria LNG website.

The regasification capacity of the terminal amounts to 10 to 15 billion cubic metres a year which is almost four times the annual gas consumption in Croatia.

($=0. 0.684 euro)