In the second half of this year, INA's natural gas processing plant in Molve will start processing gas from MOL's exploration fields in Hungary, the Jutarnji List daily learned from INA.

It is a joint project of the two companies called Somogy, which started back in 2008 and which was stopped in the meantime, but has now been relaunched as Europe is turning away from Russian gas.

The Somogy project includes the connection of the Hungarian gas fields Vízvár and Görgeteg-Babócs to the Gola gas station and the dispatch and processing of gas in the central gas station at Molve. It started in 2008, but was stopped due to the financial crisis at the time. It was restarted last year and the start of processing is expected in the second half of this year, according to INA.

The same source reveals that in order to begin the exploitation of Hungarian gas in Molve, the remaining investment is on the Hungarian side, where it is necessary to build a 20-kilometre connecting gas pipeline and develop the infrastructure, which, they point out, is the bulk of the investment and is under the jurisdiction of MOL.

Part of the investment in Croatia relates to the modification of the Gola Duboka gas station and the installation of a measuring line, which is the responsibility of INA, according to the source at Croatia’s largest company. They state that 170,000 cubic meters will flow from Hungary to Molve per day for processing.

This amount, as stated by the president of the Croatian Professional Association for Gas, Dalibor Pudic, is about 10 percent of the total annual gas production in Croatia, which, he concludes, is not negligible.

When asked how MOL and INA will share the revenue from the sale of gas from the Vízvár and Görgeteg-Babócs fields, INA said that “the gas will be processed at CPS Molve and INA will charge MOL a fee for that”, Jutarnji List reported.