According to the Banja Luka daily “Nezavisne Novine,” oil has been found in the northern Serb Republic (RS), at the depth of some 2 km. Estimates are that the find runs anywhere between 20 and 50 million (metric) tons.
Chris Deliso gives a fair roundup of the story over on Balkanalysis, concluding:
“Now we do have yet another reason, however, for the Americans’ never-ending bullying of the Bosnian Serbs over compliance with the kangaroo court at the Hague.”
Ironically (but not surprisingly), this potential source of millions in “black gold” may be more of a curse than a blessing for the beleaguered Bosnian Serbs, already under tremendous pressure from the Imperial viceroy and the Muslim centralizers.
Viceroy Ashdown’s U.S. deputy, Donald Hays, has led a persecution campaign against the RS power company (EPRS) for over a year, sabotaging a major construction project and conducting a corruption probe that has so far failed to turn up any evidence of wrongdoing. The company is one of the rare enterprises in the RS – and Bosnia in general – that has been profitable, exporting electricity to neighboring nations and provinces. Its Federation counterpart (EPBiH), meanwhile, has been a den of corruption for over a decade, serving as a cash cow for both the government and the SDA party. However, it has been largely immune from foreign scrutiny.
So chances are that Deliso is right: the discovery of oil will likely be another prize to be coveted by both the centralizers in Sarajevo and their Imperial enablers, making any peace in Bosnia that much more unlikely…