Croatia's national oil company Ina began extracting natural gas from a new offshore well in northern Adriatic, the company said on Thursday.

“The Ika B-1R-DIR well has been successfully connected to Ina’s existing production system in the northern Adriatic, which means the addition of 150,000 cubic metres of natural gas every day into Croatia’s gas distribution system. Extraction from the new well is projected at nearly 55 million cubic meters per year, which at the moment represents almost 7 percent of Ina’s total offshore and onshore gas production,” the company said in a press release.

Ina added that the new well has resulted from the company’s exploration activities launched in 2019 whose goal was to identify locations for new wells in the northern Adriatic, in order to counter the expected decline in the production of natural gas at all three of Ina’s current exploitation fields that it operates in the northern Adriatic.

Since September 2020 three wells have been built. The latest one, called Ika B-1R-DIR, is the first one to begin exploitation. A second well is expected to launch production in early April, with an expected yield of 40,000 cubic meters of natural gas. The third well requires the construction of a new platform “which will be decided upon… in the years to come,” Ina said.

Ina added that since 2016 it has also invested in onshore sites, which resulted in commercially viable discoveries of gas basins near Severovci in northern Croatia, with an estimated exploitation capacity of 53,000 cubic meters per day. Another smaller basin was discovered near Jankovac, also in northern Croatia. They are expected to begin exploitation “in the following period,” Ina said.

Ina is also investing in projects to increase oil and gas production in its existing fields. Recently a well was successfully drilled at the Jamarica exploitation field near Novska which is expected to bring in some 40,000 cubic meters of natural gas per day.

“Activities are also also continuing for gas production at the Zalata-Dravica field which extends into Hungary. All gas will be delivered to the Molve processing plant from where it will be transported to consumers through Croatia’s gas distribution system,” Ina said.