The purpose of the project is to increase the amount of crude oil and natural gas that can be extracted from the oil fields Zutica and Ivanic, which is to be achieved by injecting carbon dioxide and water into the existing gas and oil reservoirs.

This will alleviate the impact of declining production and revitalise old and rather exhausted reservoirs, INA CEO Zoltan Aldott said at a news conference held on the occasion of the project launch.

Economy Minister Radimir Cacic said the government supported the project.

In the 24 years that EOR techniques will be used on the oil fields Zutica and Ivanic, oil and gas production is expected to amount to 3.4 million tonnes of oil and around 500 million cubic metres of natural gas, amounts that would not be possible to produce with the current techniques, Aldott said.

Total investments in additional oil and gas extraction on the two fields, from the start of the project in 1997 to its completion in 2022, are estimated at 1.13 billion kuna.

Earlier this month, three consortia headed by the companies STSI and Koncar, were awarded contracts to carry out work on the two fields within the EOR project.

Aldott said that INA's investments this year were planned in the amount of more than two billion kuna, 35 percent more than last year, of which three quarters referred to investments in Croatia.

Minister Cacic said that the government and INA's management had completed strategic talks agreeing on the maximum support for the launching of an investment cycle, in which he said INA would have an important role.

That is why the government has decided not to withdraw a part of INA's dividends for last year, in the amount of close to one billion kuna, which was to have gone to the state, he said.

An important thing about the EOR project is that it involves the application of new technologies that could also be applied elsewhere, for example in the future underground gas storage facility in Benicanci, said Cacic.