April 10 (SeeNews) - Serbia's NIS [BEL:NIIS] plans to start this year exploratory oil and gas drilling in Bosnia's Serb Republic entity, the company's CEO said on Wednesday.
The company also plans to expand across the entire territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina the networks of Gazprom premium and NIS Petrol budget filling stations, Kiril Kravchenko said on the company's website.
In January, NIS said it plans to launch 36 filling stations in Bosnia and Herzegovina this year as part of its regional expansion.
The Serbian company plans to operate a network of at least 100 filling stations across Bulgaria, Romania and Bosnia by the end of 2013 as part of plans to boost its regional retail footprint.
Russia's Gazprom Neft, a 56.5% shareholder in NIS, said in December the Serbian company will run a regionwide premium retail chain of Gazprom-branded petrol stations after launching the network's first outlet in the region - in Belgrade - that same month.
NIS (www.nis.rs) is one of the largest vertically integrated oil and gas companies in southeastern Europe, engaged in the exploration, production and refining of oil and gas, as well as in the marketing of petroleum products.
The Serb Republic is one of the two autonomous entities that make up Bosnia and Herzegovina. The other one is the Muslim-Croat Federation.
($=0.775 euro)