The Bosnian Serb government on Friday invited Swiss-based oil trader Vitol to form a joint venture with its sole oil refinery, which has production problems beacuse of mounting debts. Vitol helped the refinery restart production in 2003 with $2 million of investment.
The government said in a statement that it asked the Vitol management to find ways to enable continuous production in the refinery and gave it a 15-day deadline to submit a bid.
"We asked Vitol to respect the agreed deal and warned it that the cuts in supplies have caused the refinery to accumulate debts," the government said in a statement.
The statement made no other reference to a supply deal or problems in supplying the Brod refinery.
It said that it also invited several other firms to form a joint venture but did not name them.
Vitol was unavailable for comment on Friday.
The refinery lost its market after Bosnia's 1992-95 war but now produces gasoline, diesel, heating oil and bitumen.
Brod, which is located in the Serb half of Bosnia, can process 120,000 tonnes of crude a month which would cover 80 percent of Bosnia's needs. But it currently accounts for only 8 percent of total oil sales in Bosnia.
The government has said that the refinery, whose value is estimated at 412 million Bosnian marka ($256.7 million), had liabilities of 224 million marka last year. It posted a 39.8 million marka loss.
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