Republika Srpska government approves biorefinery project

The Republika Srpska (RS) government approved a project to build a biorefinery and adopted a draft law regulating the natural gas sector. A statement from the government session in Banja Luka early in December 2017 said that the cabinet discussed a report on cooperation and draft protocol and solutions for the project to build the biorefinery to produce cellulosic ethanol in that Bosnia-Herzegovina entity.

The government decided to approve the protocol on cooperation to build the biorefinery and empowers Minister of Industry, Energy and Mining Petar Đokić to sign it with the local company Timemedia d.o.o. Višegrad and Italian Goldwater SRL Latina.

The RS Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining received a letter of intent from those two companies expressing their interest in building the biorefinery after having assessed that there are sufficient resources in the Semberija area of the RS in northeastern Bosnia to produce cellulosic ethanol as a fuel.

The RS government statement did not specify the cost of the project nor when construction would start and when it would be completed.

It recalled that a presentation of the project was held on October 23 when a decision was taken to draft the protocol whose signing would mark the start of the implementation of the project, that is securing the financing and other requirements to build the biorefinery.

The RS government also adopted a draft law on gas which regulates the manner of organizing and conducting energy activities in the natural gas sector, the competencies of the Regulatory Commission for Energy in that sector, the conditions for regular, quality and safe supplies to consumers, access to the natural gas market, rights and obligations on the market, consumer protection, implementation oversight and other issues in the natural gas sector.

The draft law is intended to regulate the sector more fully and more precisely with the aim of raising services standards and competitiveness on the domestic natural gas market, the government statement said and added that the draft law is in line with the appropriate European Union directives and with the obligations the RS accepted under the agreement establishing the Energy Community as well as the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the EU.