Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) does not have its own oil refinery and is entirely dependent on imports of fuels that are almost entirely produced by refining Russian oil. BiH is not necessarily threatened by shortages following European Union (EU) sanctions against Russia, but prices are rising.
BiH is supplied with diesel and gasoline mainly from four directions – neighboring Croatia and Serbia, then Italy and Greece.
It procures gas only from Russian Gazprom through the “Turkish Stream”.
Milenko Boskovic, president of the Association of Petroleum Products Traders in the Federation of BiH (FBiH), told Radio Free Europe (RFE) that refineries in the countries use almost all Russian crude oil.
“The NIS refinery (Petroleum Industry of Serbia) in Pancevo used Russian crude oil one hundred percent. Biofuels come from Hungary (MOL), which is in an ownership and partnership relationship with INA, and those pipelines coming from Russia are exempt (from European sanctions). INA’s refinery in Rijeka gets crude oil by ships and that oil is partly Russian, but not completely. We have the closest European refinery from which we have a significant supply, and that is Lukoil’s refinery in Sicily. It also used Russian oil, “ Boskovic explained.
Boskovic added that only the refinery management knows what the share will be after the Western sanctions against Russia. For refineries, it’s part of a trade secret.
In 2021, a total of close to 1.35 billion liters of fuel worth more than 1.41 billion BAM (about 739 million euros) were imported to BiH, the Indirect Taxation Authority (ITA) of BiH told.
Diesel is most represented, as last year it was imported about 1.18 billion liters worth 1.22 billion BAM (about 630 million euros), which is more than 88 percent of total imported fuel.
About 161.6 million liters of gasoline worth about 190.3 million BAM (slightly more than 97 million euros) were imported, or about 12 percent of the total imported fuel in 2021.
Viewed by country, most fuels (diesel and gasoline) were imported from Croatia in 2021, about 535 million liters, which is about 40 percent of total imports.
About 388.4 million liters of fuel or about 29 percent of total imports were imported from Italy to BiH.
According to the BiH Statistics Agency for 2021, total imports of all goods amounted to 21.59 billion BAM (about 11 billion euros), which means that oil and gasoline account for 6.25 percent of imports, RSE writes.
E.Dz.
